What are the requirements for supporting Collada/DAE models in SceneKit?

2
votes

I have received Collada (DAE) files from several different 3D authoring tools (Rhino, Blender, Cinema4D, etc) and have found that sometimes the models fail to load. Xcode does not provide any information when a model fails to load. It simply shows an alert that says "The file couldn't be opened."

Are there any requirements -- specific DAE version, limited subset of features, etc -- that my 3D designer should be aware of when exporting a DAE file for me?

I have, of course, searched Apple's docs without finding any information on DAE requirements.

1
ios3dscenekitcollada
yeah... there's a thing about formats of universality... they're not. – Confused
I haven't tried it myself, but another import route might be using Model I/O, and one of its supported import formats (abc, ply, stl, obj). MDLAsset -initWithURL:, then SCNGeometry +geoometryWithMDLMesh. I don't immediately see how to get from an MDLAsset to an MDLMesh. MDLAsset has an array of objects, which can be MDLMesh instances. – Hal Mueller

1 Answers

5
votes

Avoid Collada version 1.5 (as far as I know only Cinema4D exports to 1.5 by default but it has an option to export 1.4). Collada 1.5 is not supported by SceneKit. Then, in my experience with Maya and 3DSMax, the "openCollada" exporter (free plugin) gives better results than the built-in exporters.