That's a topic that comes once in a while in our studio. Artists, generally non-technical people like to look what's inside the file. This way they can spot an

That's a topic that comes once in a while in our studio. Artists, generally non-technical people like to look what's inside the file. This way they can spot an extra bone in an animation, or material that should've not been used in an model. Sometimes changing the model allows for merging, or doing diff in the source control system. A more elaborate 3D diffing is what's needed, like the one shown here: http://3drepo.org/ http://3drepo.org/ - but it's not an easy thing, and not very easy to integrate either. Sometimes binary files might be bigger than text, not often but possible - for example if double is used for number it always takes 8 bytes, while as text it might be just two (0 and space). Also certain source control systems (like perforce I think) can store differences only if the files are text, otherwise they have to store full copies (that's really not a big game changer, but one more little detail to be aware). Artists, coders often would look for a material/bone by just using Find in Files/grep/etc, and although this might work for binary files, it's harder to show the data.