VizWorld.com

If you couldn’t make it to the various Khronos BOF’s at SIGGRAPH on OpenGL, OpenCL, or COLLADA, then you can at least view the presentations online. There’s several to look at:

• OpenGL BOF:
  • Ecosystem Update
  • GLSL Overview
  • Intro and Overview
  • Jon Peddie Intro
  • SPEC Update
  • gDEBugger Update
• OpenCL BOF:
  • AMD GREMEDY
  • Intel
  • Intro and Overview
  • NVIDIA
• COLLADA BOF:
  • Intro
  • Extensions Process
  • Alan Chaney
  • Rightware
  • Web Viewer
  • Publishing 3D Characters
  • Kanzi

Khronos Developer Presentations Library.

Science collada, khronos, opencl, opengl

Users of E-on Software’s Vue 8 product can now upgrade to Vue 8.4 and start importing DAZ 3D models.

“We’re excited about the new DAZ 3D import features in Vue 8 Frontier”, explained Nicholas Phelps, e-on Software CEO. “Our customers have been requesting this capability given the increasing popularity of DAZ 3D models and use of DAZ Studio with Vue.”

The actual import feature support static Poser models and Collada format’ed DAZ3D files (exported from DAZ Studio), and supports the full native shading tree in Poser for full material support.

Retails for $99, but a free upgrade for existing VUE8 users.

via e-on software – E-on Software.

Graphics collada, e-on, software, vue

The COLLADA file format is gaining steam as now 3dvia, owners of a huge model library used in their shape modeling application and rendering engine, now supports COLLADA dae formats.

3DVIA.com is an online community where over 110,000 registered 3D artists, application developers and enthusiasts from around the world interact with one another, learn from 3D experts and exchange their own 3D creations online through the 3DVIA interactive viewer. 3DVIA already supports the uploading and sharing of 3D models in many popular file formats, including: .3dxml, .3ds, .obj, .kmz, .iges and .step. To support the COLLADA announcement, the site has converted all existing 15,000 public models over to the .dae format and will automatically convert and store any new models published to the public warehouse in both formats.

Get full details on the 3dvia.tv site.

via Aug 4 – 3DVIA Supports COLLADA .dae Format.

Graphics 3dvia, collada, software

The winners of the COLLADA contest at SIGGRAPH2009 have been announced, and the first-place winner is an impressive solution from Charles Han of San Francisco, Navicad.

Dan Halabe and Chuck Han have released NaviCAD, the only way to view the Google 3D Warehouse on the iPhone.  You can search through thousands of 3D models to view and navigate in 3D. NaviCAD has been approved for sale by Apple and is available for download immediately here.

Check out the website for some impressive visuals, and you can download the app for a mere $0.99.

Winners Circle – COLLADA Contest – Champion the 3D Web using COLLADA.

Science collada, contest, iphone, siggraph

COLLADA is picking up steam, and at SIGGRAPH they has some major announcements from big names like Maya, EA, and Google.  The Khronos Group’s latest specification, COLLADA 1.5, now has support from a wide variety of vendors:

Among the wide range of CAD/CAM/CAE, gaming, consumer and professional 3D leaders supporting COLLADA at SIGGRAPH this year are Google®, through the company’s O3D plugin for the viewing of 3D objects on any Web page; Maxis®/EA® via their award-winning Spore® game, and Blender(TM), being showcased in the Blender Foundation booth  #3701.

Also, they have new plugins to add support for COLLADA into Max and Maya:

After one year of Beta, NetAllied Systems finally released the next generation of COLLADA exporters and importers for Autodesk 3ds Max and Autodesk Maya built on the latest OpenCOLLADA SDK. OpenCOLLADA plug-ins are available for immediate download at http://www.opencollada.org

The OpenCOLLADA plugins support all major versions for 3ds Max (8 to 2010, Win32, Win64) and Maya (2008, 2009, Win32, Win64, MacOSX). The most important new features include:

• First available tools that fully supports COLLADA 1.5.0
• Embedded into 3ds Max is a 3d Google Warehouse client that allows seamless import of hundreds of thousands of 3d models (see http://www.youtube.com/netallied)
• Performance boost up to five times for importing and exporting compared to any other solution available
• Interoperability has been tested with many tools, including the newly released Electronic Arts Spore and Daz Studio exporters or Bentley Microstation 8i
• Plug-in installers are available on www.opencollada.org under a freeware license that allows commercial usage

Read the full announcement after the break.

Read more…

Graphics collada, khronos

Looks like the most recent patch to EA’s Spore game has a new hidden feature: COLLADA export.  With this, you can export your creates into COLLADA format, complete with textures and materials, and render them in the package of your choice.

With Spore’s just released patch 5, you can export creatures (and buildings and vehicles) from Spore into Maya (or any other 3D application that supports the Collada format). All thanks to the brilliant Dan Moskowitz.

The exported creations include normal, diffuse and specular maps, and are fully rigged and weighted. So you can pose them too.

Currently it’s only Creatures, although the article hints at buildings and vehicles coming in a future patch.

via Ocean Quigley’s various projects:: You can export Spore creatures to Maya.

Graphics collada, ea, spore, videogame

The Khronos Group, the braintrust behind OpenCL and OpenGL, have announced a trio of BOF’s and a list of papers that they will be presenting at SIGGRAPH2009 in New Orleans.  The BOFs are:

• OpenCL – by Neil Trevett, NVidia
• COLLADA – by Remi Arnaud, Intel
• OpenGL – by Barthold Lichtenbelt, NVidia

The three papers they list are on on Shader-Based OpenGL and programmable shaders.  Visit their website for registration information.

Siggraph 2009 New Orleans – Khronos Group Events, Seminars and Presentations.

Hardware collada, khronos, opencl, opengl, siggraph

Luxology just announced a new custom COLLADA plugin for the upcoming modo401 that will introduce several new import and export features capable of preserving the most complex 3D pipelines.

Luxology will be demonstrating its new COLLADA plug-in at the GDC 2009 Chalk Talk session called “New COLLADA I/O Plug-in for modo 401.” Presented by Luxology’s David Vasquez, the session will take place at the Intel Visual Adrenaline Lounge from 1:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, March 26.

It also supports layers transform stacks and a special “modo profile” technique that allows you to export every attribute as Text properties that can be properly imported back later, allowing you to manipulate the data with other packages.

via CGSociety – COLLADA for modo 401.

Graphics collada, gdc, luxology, modo