Khronos Announces Release of COLLADA 1.4 and New Members Emdigo, Feeling Software and Softimage

"Every day, thousands of game artists and developers use COLLADA-based tools to author and process their next-generation game assets. With the addition of shading effects and physics to COLLADA 1.4, we expect this adoption rate to significantly accelerate," said Christian Laforte, CEO, Feeling Software. "Technologies such as COLLADA and OpenGL ES enable exciting new games, graphical applications and devices that are becoming an integral part of our everyday life. This resonates strongly with the Feeling Software spirit. This is why we are thrilled to join the Khronos Group and to further contribute to this next wave of 3D innovation. "

"We are leveraging the strengths of XML and XML Schema to provide better content models for your game data in COLLADA 1.4," said Mark Barnes, chairman of the Khronos COLLADA working group. "COLLADA FX has a well defined structure that can be parsed and validated more easily than other effects formats that rely on scripts. By working with standard technologies, industry leading companies and open source developers alike, we are defining a standard format that expands the tool horizon for artists and developers, enabling these creative people to use the best tools available to create the amazing experiences of next generation games."

"This new version of COLLADA is accelerating industry adoption and there are already COLLADA 1.4 exporters for leading tools such as 3DStudio, Maya, Blender and Lightwave," said Neil Trevett, president of the Khronos Group, chairman of the OpenGL ES Working Group and vice president of embedded content at NVIDIA. "Tools such as NVIDIA's FX Composer 2.0 and gaming engines ranging from the Unreal Engine and Agent FX; to open source software such as Blender and OGRE are incorporating support for COLLADA - making COLLADA not just a specification but a genuine force in the industry to encourage and enable the creation of great gaming content."

The COLLADA 1.4 data digital asset schema is the first cross-platform standard shader and effects definition written in XML and includes core features such as mesh geometry, skinning, morphing, animation and data validation. This new version of the digital asset schema will enable content creation pipelines that can automatically condition and scale 3D geometry and texture assets for real-time playback on a wide diversity of platforms including hand-held devices.

COLLADA FX, new in version 1.4, supports high-level and shader effects with next generation lighting, shading and texturing capabilities and supports DX shader models 1.x, 2.0 and 3.0 under the Cg and GLSL profiles. Khronos and members of the COLLADA working group are developing open source example code for COLLADA and will release a COLLADA conformance test suite during 2006.