towards a 3d asset standard - collada in softimage|xsi
DESCRIPTION
Towards a 3D asset standard - COLLADA in Softimage|XSI. Alexandre Jean Claude team lead – rendering/data management/pipeline SOFTIMAGE/AVID. SOFTIMAGE. Subsidiary of AVID Technology Inc. 3D content creation tools for games and visual effects Strong focus on characters - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
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Towards a 3D asset standard - Towards a 3D asset standard - COLLADA in Softimage|XSICOLLADA in Softimage|XSI
Alexandre Jean Claude
team lead – rendering/data management/pipelineSOFTIMAGE/AVID
SOFTIMAGE
Subsidiary of AVID Technology Inc. 3D content creation tools for games and
visual effects Strong focus on characters Khronos contributor member
Softimage Co., a subsidiary of Avid Technology, Inc., delivers innovative, artist-friendly character creation and effects tools to animators and digital artists in the film, broadcast, post-production and games industries. Its product line includes SOFTIMAGE|XSI,
the industry's only non-destructive digital character production software, and SOFTIMAGE|Face Robot, the first production toolset that multiplies face animation productivity by simplifying the complex process of preparing the face for animation and by giving artists
precise control over the results.
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AgendaAgenda• Our history with COLLADA• Why COLLADA ? • Architectural overview• COLLADA in game authoring • COLLADA in general interop• COLLADA in workgroups and collaborative workspaces• Demo• Conclusion
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Our history with COLLADAOur history with COLLADA• Started participating on designing COLLADA since 2004• Released our first plug-in in August 2004• Released 6 other versions afterwards• Fully integrated and supported in Softimage|XSI in 2006• Part of our ongoing interop strategy
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Why COLLADA ? Why COLLADA ? • Feature rich and well documented- A very good set of 3D data can be stored in COLLADA files (geometry, effects, physics, etc.)- XML syntax makes it easy to parse- Documentation is exhaustive, tons in information on COLLADA forums
• Growing industry adoption- Mostly games right now- Film is looking at it
• Growing integration in tools- XSI, Maya, Max, Sketchup, Blender, etc. (you saw the list in the Sony presentation )
• Collaboratively designed by multiple parties under an independent body- Non-proprietary- Feedback from a larger crowd- Leverage expertise from different companies- License to use is very permissive
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Architectural overview Architectural overview
COLLADA dotXSI
Softimage | FTK
XSI Face Robot Viewer Max Game
Semantic Layer
IO Layer
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Architectural overviewArchitectural overview• The Softimage|FTK (File Tool Kit) is the main hub for data interop support in XSI- Currently supports dotXSI and COLLADA natively- Other converters and applications are using it extensively- Provides access to COLLADA data with an object model API- Available as a standalone library
• The IO layer - Basic IO functions to write and parse COLLADA files- SAX-like interface to access COLLADA elements- Templates (elements)- Parameters (content)- Attributes
• The semantic layer- DOM-like interface to access COLLADA elements- Adds semantics to the COLLADA elements- Complete scene graph description- Scene- Models- Hierarchies- Animation- Materials- Etc.
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Architectural overview Architectural overview
COLLADA dotXSI
Softimage | FTK
XSI
FTK converter
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• FTK converter - Converter that translates XSI content to the FTK and vice versa- Source code is provided with the XSI SDK
• Translation features- Provides unified support for COLLADA and dotXSI- Provides COLLADA IO services in XSI for other tools (e.g. Reference models)
• Conditioning features- Convert to triangles- Plot, resample and compress animation - Plot deformation to shapes- Converts subdivision surfaces to meshes
Architectural overview Architectural overview
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COLLADA in game authoringCOLLADA in game authoring
Authoring
AssemblyConditioning
Delivery
Game
Geometry Textures AnimationShaders Hierarchies CustomPhysics
Characters LevelsProps
Conditioning
Delivery game data
XSI
XSI XSI
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COLLADA in game authoringCOLLADA in game authoring
XSI
3D data•COLLADA•dotXSI•FBX•OBJ•.X•SI3D•XSI
2D data•DDS•All major file formats
GPU Effects•COLLADA FX•CGFX•FX
3D data•COLLADA•dotXSI•FBX•OBJ•.X•SI3D•XSI
3D data with external bindings•COLLADA•dotXSI•FBX•OBJ•.X•SI3D•XSI
2D data•DDS•All major file formats
GPU Effects•COLLADA FX•CGFX•FX
3D data•COLLADA•dotXSI•FBX•OBJ•.X•SI3D•XSI
3D data•COLLADA•dotXSI•FBX•OBJ•.X•SI3D•XSI
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COLLADA in game authoringCOLLADA in game authoring• The glue that binds the pipeline together is COLLADA- COLLADA is rich enough to store most of the data that need to go through the pipeline- COLLADA can reference other documents, making it very flexible to manage assets
• COLLADA integration in XSI- Produce COLLADA assets- Modify COLLADA assets
• XSI has a toolset that is useful at these stages- Authoring- Post-authoring conditioning- Assembly
• XSI kick-ass tools can be used in a non-XSI centric pipeline- Gator- Ultimapper- Animation mixer- Etc.
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COLLADA in general interoperabilityCOLLADA in general interoperability• General interoperability requirements are a super set of the features required by
game authoring- Software rendering support- Complex rigs (IK, constraints, expressions)- COLLADA provides a very good base for 3D interoperability, but lacks specialized data
• Additional requirements for extensibility and user custom data- COLLADA <extra> is perfect for this task- Each tool can attach their own <extra> to persist their specific parameters- COLLADA integration in XSI preserves all <extra> perfectly making it very interoperable with other tools
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COLLADA in workgroups and collaborative COLLADA in workgroups and collaborative workspacesworkspaces
• Reference models allow several artists to share 3D assets- A Master hierarchy (XSI model) is stored on disk- A scene can instantiate multiple references of this XSI model (reference model)- Local changes can be applied to each reference
• XSI supports reference models in multiple storage formats- Native XSI- dotXSI - COLLADA
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COLLADA in workgroups and collaborative COLLADA in workgroups and collaborative workspacesworkspaces
• Assembly of scene involving asset created by multiple parties- Use reference models to externally reference 3D assets
• Multi task on 3D assets (i.e. rigging, modeling, animating)- Rig, geometry and animation are stored in different COLLADA files- They are assembled in the final scene
DCC 1
DCC2
3D character
Rig reference
3D geometry reference
3D asset (COLLADA file)
3D asset (COLLADA file)Modeler
animationAnimation fileAnimator
Rigger
DCC2
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DemoDemo
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ConclusionConclusion• COLLADA has grown to be a viable format for storing 3D assets because of its
richness and its wide adoption• This maturity allows it to be used in a multitude of scenarios that were simply
impossible to accomplish before• Softimage is strongly committed in continuing to develop and integrate
applications that talk to COLLADA as well as designing its future specs