Tips for a beginning programmer on how to directly read and write .DAT files in C++, specifically importing and exporting data for character models?

This is something that even I, as a somewhat experienced programmer, wouldn't know how to do

Reading DAT files is easy, finding them, not so much (although it's easier if you know what to look for), displaying them is tricky. That does not only require C++ knowledge, but knowledge of a graphic library and possibly a GUI toolkit. You would need to translate FFXI's format into one the library can display (unless it's a format the library can read directly... which I don't know, but someone else could probably shed some light on it *looks at Iryoku*). Regardless, you will probably need a fairly decent grasp of 3D graphical programming to do anything more than display a static image. I don't know which library you'll end up using, but unless it provides a whole abstraction layer of the graphical fundamentals you might need to know things like geometric transformations in 3D space to do things like zoom, rotate, move, etc..

But don't let this discourage you, the reason I wouldn't know what to do with this is because I simply didn't work much in that particular area. You will need to read into it some, but maybe it's easier than my mind's making it sound. Again, Iryoku would probably know better.

In general though you could hang out on our IRC channel, it's probably the best and simplest way to get FFXI related help (especially programming help). We're on irc.ffochat.net, #windower.

In general though you could hang out on our IRC channel, it's probably the best and simplest way to get FFXI related help (especially programming help). We're on irc.ffochat.net, #windower.