COLLADA .dae
XML interchange from the pre-glTF era. Verbose but complete.
What a .dae file holds
COLLADA is an XML-based interchange format standardised by Khronos in 2004 as a vendor-neutral answer to FBX. It carries geometry, materials, shaders, physics, animation and full scene hierarchy, all in readable XML, and files get enormous as a result. Khronos has since moved on to glTF, but COLLADA is still what SketchUp, older Google Earth content and a long tail of CAD exporters emit.
Commonly seen in: SketchUp, Blender, Godot, Google Earth, Maya.
| Data | Stored in DAE |
|---|---|
| Geometry | Yes |
| Materials and colour | Yes |
| Texture maps | Yes |
| Animation and rigs | Yes |
| Scene hierarchy | Yes |
| Read here | Yes |
| Written here | Yes |
Tested against a real file
The last sweep loaded duck.dae from Assimp test models with its 8 sidecar files through the viewer on this site: 4,212 triangles across 1 meshes and 1 materials, in 1.9 seconds. Every format's result is on the test results page, run 2026-09-08.
What we put in a .dae file we write
COLLADA 1.4.1, with geometry, Phong materials and textures embedded as data URIs. Animation is not written, and the scene is flattened to one node per mesh with transforms baked in.
Files to bring with it
Texture images referenced by the .dae can be dropped in alongside it.
Convert DAE to another format
Every pairing has a page saying what survives the trip.
Convert something else to DAE
Other things to do with a .dae file
Questions about DAE
How do I open a .dae file?
Drop it into the viewer on this site and it opens in the browser, with the scene tree, the materials and the mesh statistics. Nothing is uploaded. If you want it in another program instead, convert it to GLB, which almost everything reads.
Is DAE a good format to archive in?
DAE carries geometry, materials, textures and animation, so an archive copy keeps nearly everything. The usual caveat applies: a format is only as future-proof as the readers that exist for it, and .dae is well served.
Does converting DAE lose quality?
Geometry is copied vertex for vertex, so the shape does not degrade. What gets lost is whatever the target format has no field for: convert to STL and the materials go, convert to OBJ and the animation goes. The comparison table on each converter page says exactly which.
Formats that hold the same things
Or go back to the full format reference.