Free Online DAE Viewer
COLLADA is the open XML format that SketchUp, older Blender versions and a generation of game toolchains used to move assets between programs. This viewer parses .dae files locally with a three.js ColladaLoader, so geometry, materials and the scene hierarchy appear without installing anything.
COLLADA files frequently reference their textures as separate image files, and a browser cannot reach those on its own. Select the .dae together with its texture folder when the exporter did not embed the images, and the materials resolve.
Select the model together with its material, texture and binary files. Files stay in this browser.
AO mode displays authored occlusion maps; white means none is supplied. This is not real-time ambient occlusion.
- Vertices
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- Triangles
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- Materials
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- Dimensions
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How it works
Add your DAE file, plus its textures
Drop the .dae file onto the drop zone or click to browse. If the exporter wrote images as separate files, which SketchUp does by default, select those images in the same step so the materials are not left grey.
Inspect geometry and hierarchy
Left-drag to orbit, scroll to zoom and right-drag to pan. The shading menu helps you check normals and UVs, while the info panel reports vertices, faces, materials and bounding-box dimensions for the whole file.
Convert to a lighter format
COLLADA is verbose, so a .dae is often ten times the size of the same scene as GLB. Use DAE to OBJ or DAE to FBX to move on, with the browser parsing the file and the server writing the output, up to 50MB.
Local parsing, 500MB ceiling
The XML is parsed inside the tab, so a client's architectural model is never uploaded. Files up to 500MB are accepted, limited mainly by your device's memory rather than by us.
Materials, effects and external images
COLLADA separates materials from effects and images, and the loader follows that chain. Add the referenced image files alongside the .dae and the surfaces render with their real maps instead of a default grey.
Units and up-axis are declared
COLLADA records the unit and the up-axis in its asset block, which is how a file authored in inches arrives at the right size in a viewer that respects them. If a model looks rotated, the exporter wrote Z-up assets while the reading tool assumed Y-up.
Ten shading modes plus viewport tools
UV checker, normal, wireframe and X-ray modes are the fastest way to see whether the UV layout is sane and whether n-gons were triangulated cleanly, with grid, auto-rotate, fullscreen and PNG snapshot alongside.
Honest about animation
ColladaLoader parses animation libraries into clips, but this page is built for static inspection and does not play them. Use the DCC tool or engine you are delivering to for motion review.
What Is a DAE File?
COLLADA, which stands for Collaborative Design Activity, was created in 2004 with Sony pushing it for the PlayStation 3 toolchain, and it became a Khronos standard in 2006 and an ISO public specification in 2012. The goal was a genuinely open, XML-based exchange format that any tool could implement without reverse engineering a competitor's binary.
A COLLADA file is organised into libraries: library_geometries for meshes, library_materials and library_effects for shading, library_images for textures, library_visual_scenes for the hierarchy and library_animations for motion, with the asset block declaring units, up-axis and authoring tool. Everything is text, so a .dae can be diffed and reviewed in a code editor.
The openness came at the cost of verbosity, and interoperability in practice is narrower than the schema suggests: triangle and polylist geometry plus phong or lambert materials travel well, while physics, controllers and the more exotic effects often do not. The ecosystem has largely moved to glTF, but COLLADA remains the native handoff for SketchUp and a common ingredient in older asset libraries.
Advantages
- Open, documented XML schema that anyone can implement
- Carries animation, skinning and physics alongside geometry
- Readable and diffable as text
- Declares units and up-axis explicitly
Disadvantages
- Extremely verbose, so files grow fast
- Ecosystem momentum has shifted to glTF
- Importer behaviour varies between tools
- Textures are usually external files, which break easily when moved
Who Uses This DAE Viewer?
SketchUp users
COLLADA is SketchUp's export format of choice, so inspecting or converting a .dae is a routine step when a model leaves SketchUp for another tool.
Architects and interior designers
Review a model exported from SketchUp or Blender on site, on a laptop, without waiting for a workstation licence to be free.
Game developers working with legacy assets
Older asset packs and console-era pipelines shipped .dae files; check what is actually inside one before committing to an import script.
Blender and Maya users
Confirm a COLLADA export made it out intact, particularly which materials survived and whether the UVs are still where they should be.
Students and teachers
Open coursework files in a browser on machines where the original authoring tool is not installed.
3D printing hobbyists
Check a downloaded COLLADA model, then convert it to STL and clean it up in the STL editor before printing.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a DAE viewer?
It parses a COLLADA (.dae) file and renders its geometry, materials and scene hierarchy in an interactive viewport. This viewer runs locally in your browser with a three.js ColladaLoader, accepts files up to 500MB, and reports vertex, face and material counts plus bounding-box dimensions.
How do I open a .dae file online?
Drag the .dae onto the drop zone or click to browse, and add the texture images at the same time if the exporter wrote them as separate files. The model is framed automatically once the XML is parsed, and nothing is uploaded.
My COLLADA model has no textures. What went wrong?
COLLADA references images as separate files, and a SketchUp export in particular produces a folder with the .dae next to a textures directory. When the browser only receives the .dae, those references cannot be resolved, so surfaces fall back to a default material. Select the images together with the .dae, or re-export from the authoring tool with images embedded.
What is the difference between COLLADA and glTF?
Both are open, text-based scene formats with comparable feature sets, but glTF is compact JSON with binary buffers while COLLADA is verbose XML with everything as text. In practice a .dae is often several times larger than the equivalent GLB, and glTF has the broader tool support today, so GLB is usually the better archive and delivery format.
Does the viewer load COLLADA animations?
The loader parses animation libraries into clips, but this page does not play them: it is built for static inspection of geometry, materials and scale. Review motion in the DCC tool or engine you are actually delivering to, where the rig and the playback settings are the same ones your audience will see.
Why is my model rotated or scaled oddly?
COLLADA declares units and an up-axis in its asset block, and tools disagree about honouring them: a SketchUp export is typically inches with Z pointing up, while many readers assume metres and Y-up. If the size is right but the orientation is wrong, the up-axis was ignored; if the size is off by 25.4, the unit was. Fix it after conversion, or scale by target width in the STL editor.
Is my DAE file uploaded to a server?
No. COLLADA is parsed and rendered locally and can be up to 500MB. Uploads only happen if you then choose a conversion, where the parsed mesh is sent to the server-side pipeline with a 50MB limit.
Can I convert a DAE file to OBJ, FBX or STL?
Yes. DAE to OBJ and DAE to FBX run browser-first: the COLLADA file is parsed in your tab, the mesh is uploaded (up to 50MB) and the server writes the target format. Materials and UVs carry into OBJ through an MTL file; animation does not survive, because the conversion passes through a mesh representation.
Why does a large .dae take so long to parse?
COLLADA is XML with a lot of repeated element names, so the browser has to build a large document tree before any geometry exists; a file that would be 20MB as GLB can easily be 200MB as .dae. Give the tab a moment on big files, or convert once to GLB and use that for repeated viewing.
Related Tools
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