What is an IV file? An IV file contains a scene graph created by Open Inventor, an object-oriented toolkit used for developing 3D scenes and animations. It is saved in a plain text format and contains "nodes," "fields," and their connections and properties that describe 3D objects. IV files are often compiled together into a single scene.

More Information IV files are utilized when users customize various 3D elements, such as geometry, lighting, cameras, textures, sequencing, and color with Open Inventor. There are several prefabricated shapes that can be customized in IV files, including cones, cubes, cylinders, spheres, 2D text, and 3D text. Open Inventor was originally developed by Silicon Graphics International (SGI), who released an open-source version. SGI opened it for third-party licensing and was maintained commercially by the Visualization Sciences Group (VSG) in 2009. However, in 2012, VSG was acquired by the Field Electron and Ion (FEI) Company, which was then acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific in 2016. NOTE: Open Inventor is built on top of OpenGL and is intended to provide a higher layer of abstraction for 3D programming.