Reverse engineering .dat files

[JstnPwll]

Hey,

My question is less of a technical question about QuickBMS as it is about theory. I know a little about reverse-engineering, but I'm not sure what next steps to take on these files.

I have a group of files I extracted from a game package that comprise graphical assets. The .pvr files are easy--those are the textures for 3D models. Now I'm struggling with the .dat files...I'm assuming most (if not all) of them are the 3D models themselves, and perhaps their animations. I can't figure out the data schema though. I've tried the script to test decryption algorithms but that didn't yield any good results. I'm somewhat familiar with various 3D modeling formats and the raw data doesn't seem to be right either.

If you were trying to crack these, what would you do next?

[zheneq]

[JstnPwll]

I found Model Researcher after you posted this. I copied the values you put in and was able to extract the model. I'm curious how you came up with right values to plug in...I didn't see any option to auto-detect information in the file. Did you just manually inspect the file and know what to look for?

[Lazov]

Here everything is described in sufficient detail.
http://lazov.ru/mr/tutorial.php

[zheneq]

Did you just manually inspect the file and know what to look for?

Yes. I saw bunch of floats and a bunch on shorts, plugged them in -- and it worked. The format is very straightforward. Though, vertex count and face count seem to be missing.