AreaDemo

AreaDemo a Japanese program for previewing a limited number of zones in FFXI outside of the game.

EDIT: Do not bother trying to use AreaDemo for modding purposes. It simply isn't worth the hassle, as I've discovered that everything I was using AreaDemo for can be done using only Noesis. It turns out that Noesis has a built-in Data Viewer tool that allows users to see the file names of all textures and materials on any given DAT file, which means that there's simply no point in going through the trouble of installing AreaDemo simply to get the correct file names for the textures (which is all I was using AreaDemo for, anyway). I'll leave this post up for informational purposes in case you still want to try out AreaDemo simply for the sake of curiosity, but don't feel pressured to download and install it for the sake of modding, and don't bother trying to integrate AreaDemo into your development pipeline. You don't need it.

The primary purpose of using AreaDemo for FFXI zone extraction is to get the texture files, since Noesis (the other model viewing program capable of viewing FFXI's zones) often doesn't correctly save all the textures, and when it does, it generally doesn't preserve the file names of the textures for some reason. AreaDemo does not have this problem, and saves all zone textures with their correct file names intact. Without the correct file names, hooking up texture files to their appropriate materials in Unity, Unreal, or Autodesk Maya becomes an almost impossible guessing game. AreaDemo saves us that trouble by keeping the file names intact.

AreaDemo also converts zone geometry, but unfortunately AreaDemo only saves the geometry data as an MQO file, a custom file format created for the Japanese 3D modeling program, Metasequoia, which is not compatible with either the Unreal or Unity game engines. The most common format of 3D model used in Unity and Unreal is FBX, and although Metasequoia does technically have the ability to convert from MQO to FBX, this feature is only available with Metasequoia's EX License, which costs $150. Because of this, I personally prefer to use Noesis to extract geometry data, and AreaDemo to extract texture data, and then I combine the two in Maya. From there, exporting to either Unreal or Unity is a piece of cake (especially since Maya literally has special menu options specifically for exporting to either Unity or Unreal).

Unfortunately, one major limitation of AreaDemo is that, as far as I can tell, the program appears to only provide its users access to the original zones. That means that there is no way for AreaDemo users to access zones from any of FFXI's expansion packs, not even Rise of the Zilart.

Additionally, it should be noted that AreaDemo only works with the Japanese version of FFXI. This isn't a huge problem, since you don't have to actually purchase the Japanese version, you only have to have it installed, and Square-Enix has made the installation files for FFXI available to download for free from the official website, but it does create an issue in that Square has chosen to make it so that the Japanese version and the North American version cannot both be installed simultaneously on the same PC, which makes this whole process rather annoying for people who don't have multiple computers, or who don't want to dual boot multiple operating systems.

Anyway, relevant links below:

AreaDemo
(requires Japanese version)

FFXI Japanese verison
(required to use AreaDemo)