.dae

What is a .dae file?

XML-based 3D interchange — "COLLAborative Design Activity."

Safe format
Type Cad
By Khronos Group (originally Sony)
MIME model/vnd.collada+xml

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What is it

COLLADA (COLLAborative Design Activity) is an XML-based 3D interchange format maintained by the Khronos Group — the same organisation behind OpenGL, Vulkan, and glTF. It was designed to be the universal translator between 3D content creation tools, and for a while it was the best option available.

The format stores geometry, materials, shaders, animations, physics, kinematics, and scene hierarchy in human-readable XML. It supports polygonal meshes, splines, NURBS, skinning, morph targets, and multi-pass rendering effects. The XML structure makes it inspectable and debuggable, but also makes files large and slow to parse — a 10 MB binary mesh becomes a 100 MB XML document.

COLLADA was widely adopted in the late 2000s, particularly in game engines (PlayStation used it as an intermediate format) and scientific visualisation. It's since been largely superseded by glTF for real-time applications and USD for VFX pipelines, but COLLADA files still circulate in older asset libraries and academic tools.

Technical details
Full Name
COLLADA Digital Asset Exchange
MIME Type
model/vnd.collada+xml
Developer
Khronos Group (originally Sony)
Magic Bytes
3C 3F 78 6D 6C (XML declaration)
Safety
.dae is a known, safe format.
What opens it
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FAQ
Is COLLADA still relevant?
It's declining. glTF has replaced it for real-time 3D, and USD is taking over VFX. But COLLADA files still exist in older asset libraries and some academic/scientific tools.
What's the difference between COLLADA and glTF?
COLLADA is XML-based, verbose, and feature-rich. glTF is JSON+binary, compact, and optimised for real-time rendering. glTF is often called 'the JPEG of 3D' — COLLADA is more like the TIFF.
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