I have a linux mint version of blender, and it doesn't have the ability to import or export .dae files and with the notation that's next to the options on other recent versions, it looks like it's going to be depreciated entirely eventually. I can work around it for now by using the steam version (or use their website to download any version), but is there going to be a plugin eventually, or maybe will beamng start supporting other formats? Maybe a .cdae plugin for blender? I feel this last option might be beneficial, as multiplayer, and even your servers might be able to take a break if they save a little bit of data each time a mod is downloaded?
CDAE is unlikely because its not editable. It is just an optimized compiled version of a dae file to speed up loading in torque engine. For DAE in the blender forum I found this: https://devtalk.blender.org/t/moving-collada-i-o-to-legacy-status/34621/77 It seems that we have to stick with Blender 4.5 LTS for now. I even use Blender 3.6 still because I have some old plugins running like ETS2 Importer.
"not editable" is a misnomer, more accurately "not currently compatible with most software like blender". With any file, it can be edited. The trick is to make it readable in blender, and exportable in blender. Currently we know of one program that can read and write cdae, and it's BeamNG, so my assumption is that they would know how to make it workable as a plugin. This would also probably be easier than to make a whole new file format compatible in the game, then try to optimise it like they did with dae>cdae. I didn't just assume it could be done, I looked at this - https://documentation.beamng.com/modding/file_formats/cdae/ and I think given enough time, I think even I might be able to make a plugin. Unfortunately I have a bunch of projects, and I don't think learning a new language like python fits into my plans :/ the big alternative is to have beamng go to another format, but cdae seems to be incredibly small, and I like smaller files (DDS image files bug me lol). However if they can have a 3D model format that has procedural materials be imported, and have beamng bake them, then that'd be so freaking good lol I hate exporting materials from blender for beamng.
