Has anyone used PyCollada http://pycollada.github.io/index.html [pycollada.github.io] for writing collada files out of Houdini? If not, has anyone used anything else to export Collada files from Houdini?

Right now I'm working on a convoluted path of using Houdini Engine to import hda's into Maya to export .dae files. This in an attempt to bring my models into AGI's System Toolkit (STK).

Thanks,
Dave

I have not tried PyCollada. Some external modules won't work with Houdini because Houdini's python is still 2.7 and most major developers are already on 3.x or better. So you may run into issues on import but why not give it a try?

You might want to try exporting to .OBJ files from Houdini. There are a quite a few 3D apps that will read an OBJ file and export to Collada, like Poser or Blender. Could save you the step of going through Houdini Engine.

If you feel up to a coding task why not write your own .MDL exporter right from Houdini? It looks like your target application will read .MDL files as well.

Here is a link to a python MDL exporter for Blender.
https://github.com/victorfeitosa/hexenii_mdl_import-export/blob/master/export_mdl.py [github.com]

Thanks for the link Enivob.

I may try that, but I have had some success using the HE->Maya->Collada route. There is a bit of trickiness at the end of needing to create an XML file that has the articulations in it, but it works. I'll need to greatly simplify my model to fit into STK, but I'm making good headway.

I'll let y'all know what I finally settle on.

Dave

I have not had complete success with this yet, but I have found that the Collada .dae format has much better shader support than .mdl. In light of that, if I do end up coding my own solution, I'll probably go with that.

Dave