Novus Convert
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Vector & CAD format

DAE converter

A .dae file is a COLLADA document: an XML scene description that can carry meshes, materials, textures, cameras, lights, skeletons, skinning weights and animation, all in one human-inspectable file. It was designed as an interchange format between content tools rather than as a runtime format.

Private for supported formats — processed in your browser

Convert supported files

Runs on your device

Drop DAE files here

Batch files can each use a different output. Nothing uploads for local conversions.

Working inputs include camera RAW, browser-local audio/video, PDF, CBZ/CBR comics, office documents, ebooks, markup, 3D models, structured text, images, and archives.

Where DAE comes from

Sony Computer Entertainment started COLLADA in 2004 to stop every PlayStation studio writing its own exporter, and handed it to the Khronos Group, which published 1.4 in 2006 and 1.5 in 2008. It became the standard hand-off between Maya, 3ds Max and game engines, and was the original format for Google Earth and SketchUp models. Khronos has since redirected new work to glTF, and COLLADA is best understood as a mature format in maintenance rather than one still evolving.

How DAE works

  • XML, so a COLLADA file is verbose but inspectable and diffable; files of tens of megabytes are ordinary.
  • Geometry lives in library_geometries and is instantiated by nodes in library_visual_scenes — a mesh with no instantiating node renders as nothing.
  • The asset block declares up-axis and unit scale, which is why COLLADA survives axis conversion better than formats that leave it implicit.
  • Supports skinning, morph targets and keyframe animation, which is what kept it in use after simpler mesh formats appeared.
  • Textures are referenced by relative path rather than embedded, so a .dae on its own is frequently incomplete.

When to use DAE

  • Moving a rigged or animated model between Maya, 3ds Max, Blender and a game engine
  • SketchUp and Google Earth model exchange, where COLLADA is the native interchange
  • Archiving a scene in a text format that can still be read without the original tool
  • Flattening a scene to plain geometry for 3D printing or web display

Strengths and limitations

Strengths

  • Genuinely broad feature coverage — materials, rigs and animation, not just triangles
  • XML, so it can be inspected, diffed and repaired by hand
  • Explicit up-axis and unit metadata, which most mesh formats omit

Limitations

  • Enormous compared with a binary equivalent, and slow to parse
  • Exporters disagree about the details, so a valid file may still import wrongly
  • Effectively superseded by glTF for delivery, and by USD for production pipelines

Compatibility

Blender, Maya, 3ds Max, SketchUp, Cinema 4D, Unity and macOS Preview all open COLLADA. No browser renders it natively. Novus Convert flattens the scene to validated triangle geometry locally and converts to STL, OBJ, 3MF, GLB, glTF, PLY and USDZ. Materials, textures, rigging and animation are not carried across: this is a geometry-first route and says so on every page.

Up-axis, unit scale and asset contributor data are read; none of it survives into the geometry-only targets.

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