So after much head scratching concerning the Collada importer in Blender, I stumbled across this bug report by Thomas Volkmann.
http://projects.blender.org/tracker/?group_id=9&atid=498&func=detail&aid=31089 It would seem the issue actually lies with Softimage/Crosswalk.... It would be great if there were an option to export safer, more basic, 'vanilla' collada files in the exporter IMO. Half the time you just want to transfer a camera and some geometry... The relevant quote: The collada-output generated by softimage seems to violate the Collada 1.4.1 specifications: According to the collada specifications from http://www.khronos.org/files/collada_spec_1_4.pdf (see page 3-7) : The common <param> (core) name attribute for animation translations may contain a <param> with name="X|Y|Z" wich specify the 3 cartesian coordinates. Blender uses name="X|Y|Z" according to the specifications: <animation> <source> <technique_common> <accessor> <param name="X|Y|Z" /> </accessor> </technique_common> </source> </animation> Softimage uses name="VALUE" for all 3 coordinates: <animation> <source> <technique_common> <accessor> <param name="VALUE" /> </accessor> </technique_common> </source> </animation> thus the most important information (which coordinate shall we use) has been corrupted. However i believe that softimage has added a lot of <extra> information enclosed in <technique profile="XSI"> and it looks very much like the true animation data is provided in this extra datablock. I guess that Blender does not support the XSI profile ? ==== Proof : 1.) I have modified the softimage dae file by replacing the 3 occurances of name="VALUE" by name="X", name="Y" and name="Z" respectively. this imports into blener and the animation is intact. 2.) I have tried to import the original collada file from softimage into meshlab. That failed. 3.) have tried to iport the original collada file from Blender into meshlab. That worked.
