dotXSI is an
ASCII
ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable character, printable and 33 control character, control c ...
file format
A file format is a Computer standard, standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary format, pr ...
of
Softimage Corporation for storing scene data.
It includes support for
mesh
Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) is a comprehensive controlled vocabulary for the purpose of indexing journal articles and books in the life sciences. It serves as a thesaurus of index terms that facilitates searching. Created and updated by th ...
es,
NURBS
Non-uniform rational basis spline (NURBS) is a mathematical model using basis splines (B-splines) that is commonly used in computer graphics for representing curves and surfaces. It offers great flexibility and precision for handling both analy ...
, 2D and 3D chains,
polygon
In geometry, a polygon () is a plane figure made up of line segments connected to form a closed polygonal chain.
The segments of a closed polygonal chain are called its '' edges'' or ''sides''. The points where two edges meet are the polygon ...
s, materials, hierarchies, skeletons,
animation
Animation is a filmmaking technique whereby still images are manipulated to create moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Animati ...
constraints,
Hermite spline
In the mathematics, mathematical subfield of numerical analysis, a Hermite spline is a spline curve where each polynomial of the spline is in Hermite polynomials, Hermite form.
See also
*Cubic Hermite spline
*Hermite polynomials
*Hermite interpola ...
s, custom effects, and user data.
Common applications are
architecture
Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and construction, constructi ...
design and
video game
A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...
s, becoming popular after Valve pioneered its use in ''
Half-Life 2
''Half-Life 2'' is a 2004 first-person shooter game developed and published by Valve Corporation. It was published for Windows on Valve's digital distribution service, Steam. Like the original ''Half-Life'' (1998), ''Half-Life 2'' is played ent ...
''.
It was based on
DirectX
Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct" ...
's ''
X file format'', and extended to handle much of those specific data structures.
The 'Crosswalk' SDK includes the ability to transfer data between dotXSI files and the formats of other autodesk products.
Computer file formats
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