Including texture files into the collada file

Question

I want to include my texture image files into my collada file. Now I have many files: the .dae itself and the .png texture files.

However I want only one file: the .dae, but with the textures included into it.

Could I somehow store the .png images in the .dae file itself? Is it possible? Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

Despite what the previous answer says, it is perfectly possible to embed images within the COLLADA file itself. Under the <init_from> element you'll find that you can either specify a filename using a <ref> element, or alternatively, you can specify <hex format="PNG"> under which you can specify the image data as a sequence of hexadecimal-encoded binary octets. This is somewhat less storage-efficient than including the image file within a .zae archive (which is really a .zip file with a different extension and a special metadata file), however, because of the hexadecimal encoding.

I know that this question is several months old but I had to correct the previous answer.