Want collada export with hierarchy

[Tom Goddard]

Sam Hertig was exporting scenes from Chimera 1 using Collada for display on web pages using 3js. He has a user interface that lets you show specific components, for example the heme in hemoglobin 4hhb. He wants to be able to identify the interesting objects in the Collada file. He says VMD outputs each object listed in its gui as a separate collada node making this easy, while Chimera 1 outputs every atom, ribbon residue, bond as a separate collada node at the same level. This is what the Chimera 1 x3d output does and the collada is converted from x3d. In ChimeraX we should try to output the model/chain/ligand hierarchy so it can be manipulated by 3d viewers.

[Tom Goddard]

Kristen Browne who works on NIAID cellphone app PathongenAR is also interested in Collada export since it has best support in other modeling apps needed to do this like mesh simplification in order to clean up models for cellphone use.