[Colladamaya-updates] COLLADA 1.4 Alpha build 1 (0.80) Released

[Guillaume L. <gla...@fe...>]

Hello everyone,

It's been a month and ColladaMaya is advancing firmly towards COLLADA 1.4 compliance. We've finished the integration of the FS import classes and completed the integration of the new COLLADA 1.4 schema. After quite a bit of testing and validation, I'm pleased to bring you our Alpha ColladaMaya 1.4 translator. It includes the export of physics and the beginning of our ColladaFX support.

One of the new interesting feature that I want you to know about, specifically, is the bucketing of the transforms on import. The importer was refactored to handle almost any transformation ordering in the COLLADA scene nodes. It does that by first attempting to place the COLLADA transformations in Maya's transform stack and if this doesn't work, it samples the transforms and imports them as matrices. This works even if the transformations are animated. This is an important development, that was originally developed for Autodesk and should greatly improve inter-operability with 3dsMax and XSI. The only issue to look for is the wrapping of the Euler rotations. This build also includes a patch from our user: Nathan Martz, who contributed two export options: set inclusion/exclusion and the filter out of constraints, as well as some fixes.

In my mind, this new build is a great way for you to start familiarizing yourself with COLLADA 1.4 and the schema changes. There are a few known issues with it: the export/import of blind data has been disabled and the import of CgFX/Physics is not yet complete. We welcome all feedback.

Starting next week, we will bring back Weekly Development Builds. Our future plans for ColladaMaya include full ColladaFX support through a custom node, the import of physics through NIMA and further improving inter-operability with 3dsMax and XSI.

You can get this new release here: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/colladamaya/ColladaPluginForMaya-0.80.zip?download

If you have any questions about COLLADA 1.4 and/or ColladaMaya, please feel free to ask!

Sincerely,
Guillaume Laforte
Feeling Software Inc.
http://www.feelingsoftware.com
<Currently migrating to the @feelingsoftware.com domain, please update your address books!>

Recent Changes:
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22/11/05 (Release 0.80)
 (gla...@fe...)
 Code Merge: Merged code from Nathan Martz, of Double Fine: set exclusion/inclusion with export option, export option to filter out the constraints and a few fixes to animation timings and COLLADA id generation.

21/11/05
 (gla...@fe...)
 After three weeks of daring my hard-drive to die, this is what I completed: full FS import classes integration. Upgraded the exported to the COLLADA 1.4 RC2 schema, including upgrading to the standard effect materials.

07/11/05
 (zh...@fe...)
 CG FX: Working effects importer is ready. Add <annotate name="Object"><string/></annotate> pointing to the light object when exporting a vector data. So that importer can setup the vector connection. Remember to perform "Delete Unused Nodes" before importing to avoid conflicted names.

05/11/05
 (zh...@fe...)
 CG FX: empty cgfx node can be imported now under the new 1.4 structure
 CG FX: export cgfxshader to <library_effects/> and leave the refernece id in a <material/>

04/11/05
 (zh...@fe...)
 CG FX: export effects to <library_materials/>, export images to <library_images/>, shader url can be imported now.

03/11/05
 (zh...@fe...)
 CG FX: "TEXCOORD" semantic is now in the <polygon/> element inputs
 
 (cla...@fe...)
 Physics: Updated capsule export to respect the latest specification. Also added code to find the simplest euler configuration to match a given rotation matrix. Not tested much, but the heuristic (i.e. to take the dot prod of the euler angles as a metric to minimize) is intuitive and works for my simple examples.
 Added support in string builder class to append -INF and +INF if such values are passed as doubles or floats. Modified the rigid constraint code to use these values instead of +/- 180.
 Physics: Don't add an sid attribute to the <instance_physics_model> node.
 Physics: Distinguish Ageia rigid body definitions by appending a "-RB" at the end of their name. This is required since Ageia rigid bodies are transforms too, so the node export code will automatically create a visual scene <node> of the same name.

01/11/05
 (gla...@fe...)
 FS Import Classes: First major step in integrating the FS Import classes: Abstract out the matrix and point classes for the FS classes to use and rid ourselves of the DAE_X parsing functions from DaeUtils.h.

31/10/05
 (zh...@fe...)
 CG FX: Textures are exported to image library.