   Which 3D format? Anyone tried collada?
  I was creating a model loader few days ago but I noticed that writing for all 3d formats is a waste of time. lol I've read this thread and I noticed ogre3d is using their own format. I was an Irrlicht developer so I'm not familiar with other engines.So, I've searched the internet for couple of hours and found out that using one 3D format for your game engine is better because there are modeler softwares out there that already created an exporter to different formats. While reading on which 3d format to use, I found this thread and one guy recommend the Collada. I found this famous game engine laso, C4 Engine that uses that format so I'm thinking of using it also.I'm planning to use it on my engine and dumped my codes in model loaders that loads md2 and md3 formats. Do you think collada is quite good format? Anyone tried it? I found out that Milkshape has a exporter to collada, does it convert most of the format like md2 (apply skeletal) to collada? I'm not really good in modeling and I don't have an Artist yet so I hope I can get some free models for that format.   
  I've tried Collada in a prototype of mine, but decided to put it on a back burner for a while because I'm danger close to my OpenGL seminar's project deadline (I've put together a quick format of my own).I could only recommend Collada. It's easy to understand, there are parsers (C++) available around the net and it can hold pretty much any property imaginable (from vertex arrays all the way up to surface friction parameters etc.). Plus it's an industry standard which means that every decent asset creation tool is able to export to and import from it.The only drawback is it's scale, it takes a couple of hours worth of reading before you can wrap your mind around the basics. It's a walk in the paradise from there.;  I've read about Collada being hard to use. They said I should use FCollada. Is it really hard to use Collada? I've read the tutorials here and notice that it is easy to use or maybe I'm wrong.   ;  i was a bit overwhelmed when i first looked at it... but if u take ur time and look at the documentation and some samples its pretty easy to grasp it...   ;  Yeah, me too. I think this will take some time to be used to it. But is there any other format which is easier than this. I think I'm pwned. lol   ;  yes there are formats that are easier to understand no doubtbut at the same time they are less capablethe general rule is more power = more complexthus looking for something that does everything + it easy to understand is difficultalso u cant convert an animated static md2 file into a skinned mesh (am artist would have to do this by hand)   ;  I never used Collada yet, but it would most probably be my next choice because, honestly, there are not many alternatives available: the most used format around is probably 3ds wich is too limited. Another good format is lightwave lwo, but as far as I know it handles geometry and surface, not other scene data (lights, cameras, ...), and AFAIK this applies to obj as well.Lightwave Core, the next lw generation rewritten from scratch, will be based on Collada, and every major 3d app I know of supports it, so I suppose that you can't go wrong.There is the Assimp project wich supports many common formats, Collada included, if you want to have a fast and easy way to load assets in your project.   ;  FCollada is a library for parsing collada files, not a different format. It's kinda clumsy and under a weird license so I'd avoid it entirely.As for simpler formats being easier, that's a myth. You may and probably will comprehend a simpler format faster, but you'll end up getting used to it and tying both your scenegraph and the way you think to it. One day you're gonna need a feature that your simple format doesn't support and you'll end up either dropping features because your format of choice limits you or reversing most of the relevant code and writing new one, then having to rewrite dependent code, and so on.Opposite of easy. It's sh*t like this that kills good looking projects even later into their development process and sucks money out of sponsors for no good reason.;  I've found a good MD5 loader tutorial few hours ago and got it now working on my engine by just rewriting my mesh class.Yeah, maybe I'll use Collada on my game engine because of its long list of features that I might use in the future. There are many people on other sites that recommend collada but others said it is very slow, hard to start and use lots of space.I'll start reading Collada's documentation after playing around on MD5 formats which I'm starting to like and I hope it will not take weeks to understand how to load the collada formats. lol   ;  Collada files are plaintext XML, so yeah, they're bulky when compared to a binary format. But there's nothing easier than making your collada loader operate on gzipped xml, then it actually gets comparably slim.   