Mogware

Mogware's Collada.Net

Are you looking for an extensible 100% C# Collada reader and writer?

Collada.NET is a reliable and robust solution for reading, manipulating, and saving collada scenes, animations or models in .NET applications. This includes vertex manipulation, texture library access, support for animation keys, and much much more.

With Collada.Net, you no longer have to marshal in overly complicated C++ objects into your .Net applications.

Written in 100% managed code, Collada.NET only requires the .NET framework be installed on the computer.

Collada.NET can be used in any .NET language including C# and VB.NET. All .NET frameworks starting from .NET 1.1 are supported.

Collada.NET fully supports all current 1.4 Collada Documents. No knowledge of these standards is required of developers, however.

Why we chose the COLLADA format:

When we first started developing a content processing tool, we quickly chose COLLADA as our intermediate format because it was an open, flexible format with a strong community.

Why we wrote COLLADA.net:

Once we began coding, it didn't take long for us to tire with the constant need and complexity of marshaling in from the COLLADA DOM. Sure it worked fine, but it just didn't feel clean and native to c# and there were some areas of manipulation that the DOM simply didn't handle for us making it more difficult to manipulate the marshaled data in c#.

We scoured the web searching for an existing c# solution that would enable us to more easily read and write the format via c# but never found anything we were happy with. In our desperation, we finally decided to create what we couldn't find and began building a 100% c# solution in such a way that files can be loaded, manipulated and resaved safely regardless of file complexity.

How we are using COLLADA.net:

We are using our COLLADA.net library in our MogBox tool to reprocess complex 3D content as seen in this demo video:

www.mogware.com/products/mog/mogbox/DesignerVideo.html

Our COLLADA.net library made it possible for us to build this strictly c# tool that truly accomplishes some amazing feats.

Why we decided to release our code:

We believe in this community and that through sharing technology, the whole can become stronger. We simply can't express how much we have loved being able to stay strictly in .net without having to marshal...There are days we want to climb to the highest peaks and pronounce "Long live COLLADA!"...We hope by releasing our solution to others, they might be able to get further in their own development projects more quickly by essentially cutting out what we consider the less desirable aspects of working with the COLLADA format in a .net environment.