Motivation

The goal of this project is enabling XNA developers to use COLLADA as their default asset format for 3D Models. By default the XNA framework only provides support for Models in the proprietary FBX and X formats.

COLLADA is an open standard managed by the Khronos Group and is widely supported by many digital content creation tools independent of any particular platform. An open format guarantees long-term compatibility throughout different DCC tools and game engines. Furthermore COLLADA is easily extendible in case of non-standards requirements which otherwise would implicate usage of a custom content format.

Additionally the ColladaXna importer itself is also open-source and therefore can be adjusted or improved by third parties, unlike XNA's FBX importer.

Currently ColladaXna only supports a relatively small subset of COLLADA's features needed to deal with single animated models. In future support for the entire COLLADA format, including complete scenes, lighting, physics and more, would be desirable.