Thread: Please explain to me .bin files and/or how people rip 3D models from games.

I'd like to go back to a few games I played in the past, and rip a few 3d Models out of them, for either creating custom renders or also printing with my 3D printer.

The first game I looked at has a folder named "Meshes" and another named "Textures" that I was able to access after I unpacked the .dat files using somebody else's tools. Textures was stored as plain .jpg, but meshes are now ".bin"

I understand that .bin is "binary," but what does this mean in terms of these meshes? Meshes are the actual 3d polygon models, of course. Is this going to be extremely difficult to reassemble, or are there a few simple things I can try?

Also, if there's another way to rip 3D models from games, I'd like to hear those, too.

Games I'm interested in ripping from are:
Thief 2 (looks like lots of tools out there, should be easy)
Dungeons and Dragons Online (not much info, this is the one I have as .bin)
FFXI
and some I'm forgetting right now.

Thanks for the launching off point!