Luxology (http://www.luxology.com) has announced a new customized
Collada plug-in for the soon-to-be announced modo 401. Introducing
new features for exporting from modo and a totally new Collada
importer, modo 401 users will be able to preserve key attributes of
their modo creations for file export and round-trip manipulation even
in complex 3D pipelines.

Luxology will be demonstrating its new Collada plug-in at the GDC
2009 Chalk Talk session called "New COLLADA I/O Plug-in for modo
401." Presented by Luxology's David Vasquez, the session will take
place at the Intel Visual Adrenaline Lounge from 1:30-2:00 p.m. on
Thursday, March 26.

An XML-based, open-source file format that enables 3D digital content
creation tools to exchange assets, Collada is used for streamlining
mixed-application workflows. Luxology has maintained the original
features of Collada, including support for animation and multiple
texture coordinate sets and the inclusion of metadata for search
operations. The Collada tools in modo 401 have been tested using the
Coherency Test Tool.

Another capability Luxology has written into Collada is support for
modo's layered transform stacks, so that multiple transforms can be
specified for a single item, allowing such constructs as orbital
planetary motion to be represented with minimum overhead. For
additional pipeline flexibility, Luxology has built a "modo profile"
technique into Collada, providing a text version of nearly all modo
items and their internal channels and animation envelopes.

The modo profile enables everything that can be exported from modo to
be imported back with the exact same values, including additional
modo-specific data that expresses items, channels and envelopes that
are not part of the standard Collada file format specification. These
human-readable modo profiles can then be directly edited using a
plain text or XML editing tool. Additionally, the exporter can output
profiles for Maya and 3ds Max, describing many elements that are not
an official part of the standard Collada specification.

The Collada tools will be provided at no charge to all modo 401 users
and will be included as source code examples in the modo File I/O
Software Developer Kit so that game developers and others will be
able to modify the tools or use this as a basis for supporting other
formats as needed.