I'm attempting too develop a 3rd party application to make it easy to import 3d model part's into my mod for skyrim the plan was to have a fileviewer and preview window of the nif model but since , I don't know what the NIF file format actually is or where to get the vertex data from it or the hole nine yards of parsing a text file in detail I'm at a lost what to do.

I'm very good at C++ but not at this super over complicated file formats , id much prefer .obj over the nif file format specification here --> http://niftools.sourceforge.net/doc/nif/index.html

If someone could help me in understanding the file format in a natural and simple way and the exact parsing needed to create the 3D Model in the frustum and a explanation on how you figured that out would be happy to know.

I use cygwin , notepad++ , win32 7