A file format that includes a constant section and a varying section. The constant section provides a referencing scheme that references the various components that comprise the scene, as well as a listing of attributes of the scene that are modifiable. Within the same file format, the varying section provides an overriding mechanism to modify the attributes that are available to be modified. Accordingly, the disclosed file format can access cached animated geometry directly and/or aggregate other files via the aforementioned referencing and sparse override semantics. This allows the same set of inspection, manipulation, and rendering tools to be used throughout the rendering pipeline, from asset creation to final rendering.