Collada geometry and animation file loading

Question

I'm considering writing a Collada loader for geometry and animation. Could someone describe from a high level how this would be done? If it will take longer than a few weekends of time I may switch strategies so I'm trying to get a feel for what this involves. I tried to read the Collada spec for animation but I didn't understand once it started talking about different animation channels.

I'm not using any game engine. I'm interfacing directly with OpenGL.

Answer 1

I am just now learning Collada. It seems it is not impossible to get some parts up soon but to implement the entire capability set is quite a handful. There are a few libraries like OpenAsset Import Library, but for the iPhone that is somewhat heavy-weight and I haven't tested it. The code is probably portable enough that you could grab the Collada portion without too much trouble.

If you are going to parse it in yourself, I'd recommend this XML parser which I just read about from this question. It is very small, fast and works with iPhones and looks to be useful in other projects as well.