Hey guys, I really like Away3d, it is like a well behaved boy, very clean and ordered. I use it everytime I can.
The only great issue (for me, at least) is that when I have to work in a commercial project, the 3d artists are different everytime and I don't have many ways to import relatively complex animated 3d models in the project because using 3ds Max 2009 colladaMax 3.05C mess up the textures sometimes (animations work fine), colladaMax nextgen disappeared (as a paid product) and openCollada animations aren't supported in Away3d. ColladaMax 3.05C works for old Maya and 3ds Max versions only. OpenCollada works for newer versions. That leaves me with no complete collada support for 3ds Max (just static models or animated when ColladaMax works). I don't know much about sketchup and blender support, I guess they could do a good job exporting, but the designer uses the tool that he masters. PV3D can import the openCollada exported models ok, so I don't think that it is openCollada problem. The 3d assets export/import process is vital in projects using a flash 3d engine. Without 3d assets a 3d application cannot exist, so it must be relatively easy for an artist to make 3d models and export them to a format that the 3d engine can read. There exists other problems with the engine related with the 3d models like z-ordering, exported features limitations and polygon count, they are normal with flash, but the capacity to read and interpret collada files main features is something very very important and it is fixable. I think that I read some months ago that adding support for openCollada animatios was not a priority if is in the plans. I know it is an open-source project, so I pretty much know that I don't have the right to demand anything, but I would be happy to know if there is some plan to add this feature because I find it very important to make Away3d an even more popular 3d engine. If it is not in the plans I would like to know if someone would be interested to be paid to fix this.
