From Blender to Papervision3D
Here is a simple wheel I created using Blender. The wheel is exported from Blender as as COLLADA object (*.dae file).
Along my way of creating this stunning artwork :) I came on to some difficulties with Blender and the Collada plugin. Such problems are always frustrating, so here are some notes that may help:
(1) Do not install the latest Blender release (2.45 at the time I write this). Use 2.43 instead, as the Collada 1.4.1 script is not working properly in the newest one.
(2) You need also to install the Python programming language because the Collada script needs some libraries that are not part of the Blender distribution. You need to set some environment variables in order make it work, but the Blender documentation mentions only one, PYTHON, which does not seem enough. After some research I found out that you need tow of them:
PYTHON=[path to python.exe in the python instaloation folder]
PYTHONPATH=[path to python instalation folder and some other folders]
On my computer it looks like this:
PYTHON="C:Program FilesPythonpython.exe"
PYTHONPATH="C:Program FilesPython;C:Program FilesPythonDLLS;C:Program FilesPythonLIB;C:Program FilesPythonLIBLIB-TK"
(3) If you do not know anything about Blender (like me) check out this tutorial. I helped me alot.
UPDATE May 17th 2008. Source code. I decided to publish the source for this example. Grab it here.