JamesH

Not been around here for a while, I'll upgrade to 3.x this weekend and look at the Exporter.

In fact the bump extension is not supported by 1.4.1 or 1.5 and is discussed here, but it has been added as part of the Max extensions in the COLLADAMAx exporter from FeelingSoft, discussed here.

To be honest the only package I have that can display the normal maps is C4 and the normal map imports fine into it, I used the <bump> element tag to identify the normal map texture. Although that tag isn't listed in the COLLADA spec and after going through a lot of the COLLADA examples it's a bit vague on identifying what the normal map references need to be. Each package seems to use a slightly different way to identify actual textures. I'm going to have a look this weekend and maybe post on the COLLADA forums so that I can get a definitive answer.

Not really knowing too much about this topic, I recompiled using the /MT option and checked the .dll with DependencyWalker and it seems to be ok now - is there anything more for me to do ? I've uploaded a new build.

I'm out of ideas I'm afraid, it works on Alpha18 for me as well. Andrew, have you got an idea on the problem ? EDIT : Andrew would the VS2005 Redistributable Package be needed ? I don't know about this, but the common denominator on both my machines is VS2005 - only a thought.

I've got an old build of the Alpha that it doesn't show up in, I'll get the latest version and have a look. Does it work with 2.10.10 ? If not, can you also try disabling your virus scanner when running 3DC (wild stab in the dark, but the scanner could be scanning the .dll as it's loaded and locking it).

Thanks, and I've just updated the download to reference the normal map.

I've got the Normal map included for the next build which I'll release tonight. Try COLLADA Loader to view the file. Cheers James.

There's nothing hardcoded, and I've just uninstalled and re-installed into a similar location and it works fine. Incidentally, what OS are you using ? I'm running XP SP2 and XP SP3 on my dev machines, I have another with Vista that I can try tonight to see if I can reproduce your problem. Has anyone else tried the plug-in ? Cheers.

In the root folder there should be a file named Log.txt, can you have a look for the three entries cMeshIO::AddCodec(): Added "Obj" mesh codec. cMeshIO::AddCodec(): Added "Lwo" mesh codec. cMeshIO::AddCodec(): Added "Fbx" mesh codec. And there should be one just before that reads if the plug-in is being loaded cMeshIO::AddCodec(): Added "dae" mesh codec.

Are you running 2.10.10 ?

Here is a plug-in to try. It still has a bit of work needed, namely in the materials department, and it needs created & modified dates adding, but it works for me. Extract ColladaPlugin.zip to your \Plugins\MeshCodecs folder so that the .dll is directly in that folder (MeshCodecs). Then run 3DC, load up a model and select Export, using the dae filetype. I'll be adding more later in the week. Let me know how you get on Cheers. EDIT: You may want to change the <unit> size as well if it is too small. EDIT2: I've changed the default unit size and updated the zip file - I'll also post a link on the first post

No, I didn't think of that, I just used TinyXML and the COLLADA spec.

Sorry, I just wanted to get COLLADA up and running, and I've still got to maybe think about an importer as well.

I'm just finishing off understanding COLLADA texture file locations and UV scale, once that's done, I'll post a plug-in to try. There's still a lot of optimizing to do, but I'll get it working correctly first. Anyway, here's the test model exported from 3DC and imported into a game engine.

Sorry Andrew, ignore my ramblings, it's amazing what a night's sleep can do ! I'd forgotten to initialize a variable and it was giving unpredictable results. Anyway, the geometry is being output correctly now and I'm just re-going through file with COLLADA refinery to make sure it adheres to the spec.

Hi Andrew, is there a way of referencing the Mesh data, i.e. Raw data and position data per individual object rather than for a whole scene ? COLLADA requires each geometry has its own vertices, normals and texcoords self contained and then referenced within the same geometry node as a polylist. I was thinking maybe of re-indexing the Raw data for each geometry, but this could be time consuming, and another way I suppose would be to include all of the scene vertex, texcoord and normal data for each geometry so at least the Raw data references would work, but the file size would be quite large and wasteful. The only other way would maybe to include some extra data in the Mesh that is exported in the Encode function. Have you any ideas ?

Thanks for the info. I think for the scaling and unit size I'll add the line &lt;unit meter="0.01" name="centimeter"/&gt; and users can alter it themselves in the generated file.

Thanks for the obj file, it's certainly sorting my code out ! I should have a finished plugi-in to try sometime tomorrow if you fancy taking it for a spin ? Cheers.

Many thanks for the offer, have you got anything with multiple geometries ? I've not had any models that contain more than one object to test, in theory my code should work with it. A question for Andrew, is there any size data held for the Mesh ? At the moment I'm having to manually edit the .dae file to change the scale I'll also be able to refine my requirements a little more this weekend as I work through some more models, sorry it's a bit vague.

I've spent the last two or three days writing a COLLADA exporter for 2.10 and have got as far as exporting the geometry, normals and texcoords, and being able to import them into an application that supports COLLADA (For me this is the C4 Engine). I'm at the stage now of working on the materials and images that are exported and would like some help if anyone fancies offering it in the following areas: UPDATE : The first release is available from here. Extract the ColladaPlugin.dll to the \Plugins\MeshCodecs folder of your 3DC installation. UPDATE : 01 Oct - Added normal map reference to the node's bound material. - Initially a couple of models in 3DC so that I can have more examples to test on. - And then finally to test the exporter plug-in in a package that supports it. Many thanks James. PS, just a quick image of two of the models in C4.

Quick feature request, nothing urgent, but would it be possible at some point to add the ability to create extra check boxes in the Export dialog from the SDK ?

Thanks Andrew, the new SDK and 3DC work great for me. Cheers.

Thanks for the clarification. I compiled the Obj example that comes with the SDK and copied the Obj.dll into the respective location. When loading 3DC it complained that 3D-Coat.exe could not be found, so I renamed 3D-CoatGL.exe to 3D-Coat.exe. Is this correct ? If so, then my plugin is still not being loaded, has anyone got this working ?

When I add my plugin to the \Plugins\MeshCodecs folder and run 3D Coat, where exactly does the plugin information appear on the menus ? Should cMeshIO::AddCodec() be called and displayed for my plugin in the log.txt file ? Cheers.