Softimage Blog

Is XML nothing more than a passing phase, a buzzword? Personally I don”t think so. It’’s inherent simplicity as a meta language, to me, makes it a valuable asset to any programmer’’s / scripter’’s toolset and makes it more than a passing craze.

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ABSTRACT
This article discusses some of the problems and solutions involved in exporting shaders from XSI, using custom tools and custom file formats.
THE INITIAL GOALS
At Big Bang I wanted the ability to write materials to XML files (and read them back, of course). This would serve two major purposes. First, it would offer a granular set [...]

This article is intended to be a fast primer to understanding XML for anyone who hasn”t had the time to investigate its capabilities. XML is a text based file format that allows you to define your own structure within the conventions laid out by the XML format. What follows will hopefully show you the benefits of using XML and how you can use it to manipulate data with minimum effort. How you then apply this to your technical solutions inside and outside of XSI is up to you.

The first part of this article looks at the ideas and concepts behind XML data. The second half will show how easy it is to put it into practice in scripting and C++.

XML is going to be the next standard for 3d scene descriptions, is it not?