Calling all coders! The Freespace artists community has all pitched in, and we're willing to hire a coder to help us!
As you all know, current support for POF files is full of bugs. Everyone except Max and Truespace users have to use third-party applications to convert their model to a POF, sometimes with more than four steps. This means loss of data and geometry errors. Even the 3DS Max exporter has its own problems.
All these problems would be rendered moot with
Collada support. As a universal standard to be supported by all modeling packages, it would mean we can convert our models to POF with no geometry errors, no loss of UV mapping, no loss of hierarchy or smooth groups-- in short, set up all the data in our preferred program and then convert it to POF flawlessly.
We have established a bounty fund, to be delivered to the programmer or programmers who can implement a reliable, stable, functional, full-featured and documented Collada import-export system, either as a standalone converter or implemented into an existing POF editor. There's
US$250 to be paid! (We expect that if there's significant collaboration, we'll all be mature enough to handle the distribution.)
If you're capable, or if you know of any resources that can help, post here!