Collada loading

How can I load collada objects into my applications?
Is there some code somewhere that can give me a good format for doing this?

Also, is collada the best thing to use? Or should I go with something else?

collada-dom

Also, is collada the best thing to use? Or should I go with something else?

Depends on your needs.

I believe that collada-dom isn’t widely used… Have a look on FCollada: http://www.collada.org/mediawiki/index.php/FCollada. Sometime ago, I had download it (MIT lisence so no issue to use it) and It seams great to me.

I think Collada feets in the asset development pipeline because so much software (Maya, 3dsmax, XSI, Cinema4D, Lightwave, Z-Brush, etc…) are using it. However for a product release… I bit less. Files will be bigger and slower to read that your own parser.