Licensing options for this format begin with FME Desktop Professional Edition.
Overview
The COLLADA Reader and Writer allows FME to read/write COLLAborative Design Activity files.
COLLADA™ is a format for establishing an open standard digital asset schema for interactive 3D applications. It was originally developed by Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA). However, COLLADA is now a standard of the non-profit Khronos Group Inc.
For more information on the COLLADA format, go to http://collada.org.
Reader Overview
The COLLADA reader produces an FME feature for the model contained in a dae file.
The reader produces a single feature containing the entire model. The feature will have a multi-surface geometry which contains the meshes described in the source data.
Writer Overview
The COLLADA writer produces a .dae file for each FME feature type that it sends to the writer.
IFMESurface and IFMEMesh geometry is converted into COLLADA triangle mesh structures. IFMELine geometry is converted into COLLADA linestrips. Texture files are written to a common folder and referenced by COLLADA models for each instance of a COLLADA writer.
By default, COLLADA models are written with Z-up coordinates in meters.
In Workbench, the COLLADA Writer supports feature type fanout and will write a different COLLADA model file for each feature type.
Note: Geometry structure is preserved in the written file. If the structure is not important, you can reduce file size by running features through the Triangulator transformer's TINSurface port, followed by an Aggregator transformer. This results in the smallest representation possible.
Old files in the output folder are overwritten by the new files with the same name. If the output files cannot be written, the translation fails.