This document describes the COLLADA™ schema. COLLADA is a Collaborative Design Activity that defines an XML-based schema to enable 3D authoring applications to freely exchange digital assets without loss of information, enabling multiple software packages to be combined into extremely powerful tool chains.

The purpose of this document is to provide a specification for the COLLADA schema in sufficient detail to enable software developers to create tools to process COLLADA resources. In particular, it is relevant to those who import to or export from digital content creation (DCC) applications, 3D interactive applications and tool chains, prototyping tools, real-time visualization applications such as those used in the video game and movie industries, and CAD tools.

This document covers the initial design and specifications of the COLLADA schema, as well as a minimal set of requirements for COLLADA exporters.

This document covers the following information:

• initial design and specifications of the COLLADA schema;
• requirements of COLLADA tools and a minimal set of requirements for COLLADA exporters;
• detailed explanations for COLLADA programming;
• core elements that describe geometry, animation, skinning, assets, and scenes;
• physics model, visual effects (FX), boundary representation (B-rep) of animation, kinematics.

The document does not specify the implementation of, or definition of a run-time architecture for viewing or processing of COLLADA data.