How to make the Better Collada Exporter work?

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:bust_in_silhouette: Asked By stormreaver

I’m trying to make the Better Collada exporter work with Blender 2.80, but I keep getting errors every time I export. Here is a screenshot of the error window:

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Here is a screenshot of my exporter options:enter image description here

I’ve tried searching for prior questions and answers, but I didn’t find anything that resembled my issue. Any help is appreciated. I downloaded the version of the Better Collada exporter that is supposed to be for Blender 2.80. As a side note, I also tried the Blender Godot exporter and got similar results.

Is the problem exporting from blender? You’d be better asking here https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/ask

Magso | 2019-06-11 12:44

Thanks for the response.

Since Juan Linietsky wrote the exporter, I am presuming that it falls under the Godot umbrella. I know how to export from Blender. The problem seems to be specifically with the Better Collada Exporter that Juan wrote.

stormreaver | 2019-06-11 17:30

Issues about the exporter can be put up here:
Issues · godotengine/collada-exporter · GitHub

There are already a few topics about Blender 2.8 export. It seems that there also already exists a fork which might help with your issue (or not).

Maybe Juan feels no urge to prioritize porting the exporter to Blender 2.8. As that version is still in beta and there exist other exporters for godot.

Anyway feel free to participate and change the exporter yourself. Anyone who can take up the fight with github :wink: can participate in the godot project.

Anyway, I’d try to adjust the line where the error occurs in export_dae.py to:

if len(armature_modifiers)>0:
   armature_modifier = armature_modifiers[0]#node.modifiers.get("Armature")

…and give it another try. But maybe there are more errors in the scipt. IDK

wombatstampede | 2019-06-12 07:23

:bust_in_silhouette: Reply From: Kzest

Try any of the functional forks, like may be this one:

:bust_in_silhouette: Reply From: Kzest

Use gltf binary format (*.glb). Its way better than collada.

I haven’t tried using Collada since my original posting in 2019. I actually don’t want to use Collada, as gltf seems to have a more promising future.

I have since used every export format Blender has to offer. I tried to settle on gltf, but it has (had?) its own problems. It seems that every single animation-capable supported format has deal-breaking glitches, including gltf. I’m more the willing (in fact, hoping) to accept that I’m lacking some crucial knowledge in how to make gltf work.

The big gltf glitch I encountered is that my animation starts out fine, but then the model starts to stretch and stretch WAY out of proportion as the animation progresses. I couldn’t find a solution to this (I was sure to apply all transformations in Blender before exporting), so I settled on a VERY sub-optimal, but visually correct, practice of exporting my animations as a series of OBJ models, and animating them in code.

I don’t want to co-opt this issue, but I wanted to address your suggestion. I appreciate the response, though.

stormreaver | 2021-10-16 10:50

This is essentially a dead topic, but I didn’t want to leave it hanging unresolved. All of the gltf issues I encountered have long since been fixed, so I use gltf for almost everything (particles require obj).

At this point, every other model format should be avoided if at all possible. For most purposes, I consider it safe to consider gltf as being Godot’s official model format.

stormreaver | 2023-05-04 19:55