Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
an application should display given a COLLADA document. An application can be
limited to wireframe, or 2D, or might only visualize the image element or physics
elements, or have no graphic display at all and still be a conformant COLLADA
application.
Therefore, the conformance test is based on a different principle. The applica-
tion tested has to load provided COLLADA content and export the content back.
It must be possible to compare the two XML documents and search for specific
items related to a given test. In addition, applications can be asked to create a ren-
dering from a COLLADA document and then a rendering from another document
so that the conformance test can compare the two pictures produced by the same
application
The conformance test is a Python-based framework that connects to the appli-
cation to be tested so that the conformance test framework can start and stop the
application, can import and export a COLLADA document, can save and load the
application in native format, and can generate images. The conformance test then
goes through hundreds of tests, usually overnight, and provides the results in an
interactive set of .html pages that make it easy to spot when tests are failing. An
application vendor can spend the necessary time fixing the issues and when ready,
submit the result of the conformance test to Khronos so it can be judged.
Since there are so many features in COLLADA and it is recognized that some
tools do not need to be 100% fluent in the language to be useful, the working group
decided to provide three levels of COLLADA compliance: baseline, superior, and
exemplary. Baseline conformance establishes the lowest level of interoperability
between applications within a tool chain. Superior and exemplary conformance
increases the level of interoperability by requiring additional feature support and
asset information preservation without transformation. Exemplary software is suit-
able for the advanced processing and archiving of your valuable 3D assets. Baseline
conformance level still guarantees good behavior of the tool and ensures that a
baseline tool will not destroy the content that it does not understand.
Now that the COLLADA conformance test is available, Khronos can start en-
forcing the usage of the COLLADA trademark and restrict its usage to the software
that has passed the test. The COLLADA Adopter Program [Khronos Group 10] is
very clear about this:
Any company may freely use the publicly released COLLADA specification to
create a product, but implementations of the COLLADA specification must be
tested for conformance in the Khronos COLLADA Adopters program before
the COLLADA name or logo may be used in association with an implemen-
tation of the specification.
At the time this article was written, no applications have been through this
process, as the test was just finalized and not enforced, but the expectation is that
as more and more applications are going through this process and gaining their
conformance qualification from Khronos, there should be a lot fewer issues with
