COLLADA: Sailing the Gulf of 3D Digital Content Creation

COLLADA is a COLLAborative Design Activity for establishing an open standard Digital Asset schema for interactive 3D applications. This book explains in detail how to use the COLLADA technology in a project utilizing 3D assets, and ultimately how to create an effective content creation pipeline for the most complex development. Errata are posted at

Review :
" book presents comprehensive and enlightening coverage of COLLADA from a practical perspective. NVIDIA is proud of the continuing collaboration on this project, and we look forward to seeing users fully utilize COLLADA to deploy next-generation 3D rendering content in future graphics applications.""- Sebastien Domine, Director of Developer Technology Tools, NVIDIA Corporation, August 2006 compatible, reliable, and predictable communications between content creation applications in a tool chain has long been the dream of developers. At last there is a solution. The creators of COLLADA have come up with a schema, which is supported by Khronos, an independent standards body, that allows the applications to communicate in an open and efficient manner-an industry standard for 3D interchange is finally here."" - Dr. Jon Peddie, President, Jon Peddie Research, August 2006 is redefining game development and promises, for once, to make it simpler and more fun to create 3D content. This authoritative book-detailed, engaging and written by the fathers of COLLADA-will enable game developers to better understand and benefit from this popular technology, so they can focus on creating bold new games instead of maintaining yet another proprietary file format."" - Christian Laforte, President, Feeling Software, Inc., August 2006 book provides a first and comprehensive introduction to COLLADA, the digital asset exchange schema, which enables a standardized way for physics to be implemented into a variety of game development environments using a variety of creative tools. It will help the AGEIA mission of expanding the role of artists in the game development process through open physics standards."" - Emmanuel Marquez Ageia, Worldwide Senior Producer, AGEIA Technologies, Inc., August 2006 ""I highly recommend this book. If you are a programmer with a reasonable understanding of 3D graphics programming and/or authoring using 3D scene graphs, you will be able to learn the basics of Collada. If you are an experienced 3D toolmaker, Collada contains everything you need to get up and running to build your game, game engine or content pipeline tool. If you are a manager or decision maker, you get the added comfort of knowing that - finally - you just might be able to write that tool once and not over and over again."" -Tony Parisi, Slashdot.org, December 2006 [The Authors] provide insight into the design of COLLADA so that readers can understand how design decisions were made and how this standard may evolve. The book will be useful to content developers interested in exchanging data between several tools, to application developers planning to use COLLADA, and to tool providers who want to add COLLADA compatibility. -Book News, December 2006 Jon Peddie gives us an interesting perspective on the games industry and the efforts being made to make asset exchange as easy as possible. - Jon Peddie, Hexus, September 2006 ""COLLADA: SAILING THE GULF OF 3D DIGITAL CONTENT CREATION is for any game developer beyond the novice stage: it discusses the pros, cons, applications and future of a bold new technology for creating games, and comes from a joint industry effort focusing on effective 3D interaction in game developments. The Collada initiative surveys the history and especially the applications of the 3D industry tool, offering up a basic guide to the Collada 1.4 specifications and reviewing foundation concepts, tools, and applications and design. It's simply a must for any serious game developer."" -California Bookwatch: The Computer Shelf, California Bookwatch, November 2006 book makes available the results of a joint industry effort, spearheaded by Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc., to create a standard for digital asset exchange that enables Playstation(r) 3 to bring more realistic content to life and into the home like never before."" -Ken Kutaragi, President and CEO Sony Computer Entertainment -President and CEO Sony Computer Entertainment, August 2006 welcomes the publication of COLLADA: Sailing the Gulf of 3D Digital Content Creation, where the centerpiece of the digital asset tool chain for the 3D interactive industry is clearly explained and presented for the first time. Softimage is proud to have contributed to COLLADA since the beginning of its development, and to watch it grow into a powerful resource supported by the industry as a whole."" - Gareth Morgan, Senior product manager for Softimage Co., a subsidiary of Avid Technology, Inc., August 2006 COLLADA initiative is a demonstration of Sony's leadership and commitment to the games development industry. Autodesk is very supportive of this effort; it helps the games community become more productive as it tackles the requirements and opportunities of new generation consoles."" - Marc Petit, VP Media & Entertainment, Autodesk, August 2006 book is an excellent first-hand account of the origins of COLLADA straight from the people that made it happen. These pages are much more then just an authoritative technical primer on enabling great content-they are also a glimpse into the passion and vision that bought COLLADA to life. The Khronos Group is honored to provide a good home to COLLADA-an open standard that is truly changing the 3D industry."" -Neil Trevett, President, Khronos Group -President, Khronos Group, August 2006"