So, I used to follow Blender very closely, but have gotten really busy lately.
2 days ago was the first time I heard the COLLADA I/O was being removed.
I stumbled across this thread
Like many others in that thread, I rely on the .dae import because Sketchup has removed every export option from the free version, and the Warehouse only gives .dae files.
So, did a little research and found this add-on that looks like it hasn’t been updated since 3.5.
I’m a developer, but have never used Python before, or done any Blender scripting.
Yesterday I decided to poke my head into the Blender add-on world and learned a little about it.
In the last couple of hours, so far, I’ve been able to update this to work in the new extension format with Blender 4.5, and using pycollada 0.9.2
and have it successfully importing some .dae files I had on hand from the Warehouse
The quality of the import is still not the best, as it is in the original add-on. There’s no names of objects, and the geometry is not in the best shape
A quick run through of Clean-up with MACHIN3Tools brought it from 32,594 triangles down to ~24,000 triangles
That fixed a good chunk of the render issues, but it still needs some work.
All that is to say, I’m working on it, and hope that it can become a supported public add-on.
I don’t know how far I’ll get in making it any better, but I’ll make my results public either way
