.dae File — COLLADA Digital Asset Exchange

COLLADA (COLLAborative Design Activity) is an XML-based open standard interchange format for 3D digital assets, managed by the Khronos Group. DAE files store 3D geometry, materials, textures, animations, physics, kinematics, and scene hierarchy in a human-readable XML schema. COLLADA was designed as a universal exchange format between 3D content creation tools, bridging the gaps between proprietary formats from Maya, 3ds Max, Blender, SketchUp, and others. The format supports polygonal meshes, splines, NURBS, morph targets, skeletal animation, rigid body physics, shader effects, and multi-texture materials. COLLADA gained significant adoption in game development, particularly with Sony's PlayStation development tools and Google Earth's 3D building submissions. While COLLADA's comprehensive XML schema enables rich data exchange, its complexity and large file sizes have led many workflows to prefer FBX for animation-heavy content and glTF for real-time delivery. The Khronos Group now positions glTF as the "JPEG of 3D" for runtime delivery while COLLADA serves as an authoring interchange format. COLLADA remains supported by most major 3D tools and is used in CAD, simulation, and heritage preservation workflows.