Awesome information. I am still absorbing it all and processing it

One question I had was, you said to take the model right from Maya/Max and put it into MeshLab. But, the problem there is I want to add icons and other things on the sides of the faces as its a 6sided die (well it will be in the end). the only way I can get a clean cut into the Box is to Divide it several times to raise the poly count, then use an Alpha in zbrush to cut the detail into the face. for example say its a skull or some other alpha.

I did try to delete the faces in meshlab and fill the holes, but like you said it then had some nasty tris going all the way across that side of the 'die' etc.

I will work it out though. This has been a great help! Now, please print my spider and send it to me! lol

Remember, if you're printing to a Solidoodle (which uses Fused Filament Deposition) you're going to have some loss of detail as the filament deposition is at .42mm width and anywhere from .3mm to .1mm height (though there is a thread where someone is doing .05mm printing).  Shapeways probably has better resolution.  Cater to your audience as far as details are concerned.

The only reason you'd export direct from Maya/Max is if you had a clean model that you weren't going to detail.  Straight box modeling stuff, a low detail model with no heavy tri-count.  Heck, even a basic figure out of a modeling package would print up right provided you didn't care too much about skin blemishing.  Armor, weapons, that kind of stuff.  I've printed a replica Babylon 5 PPG without having to worry about high detail scoring marks, though I'd put those in with a wood burning tool as we're dealing with just plastic.

You'll do fine, grogbro... just keep doing what you're doing.  Learning is the best experience.

One question I had was, you said to take the model right from Maya/Max and put it into MeshLab. But, the problem there is I want to add icons and other things on the sides of the faces as its a 6sided die (well it will be in the end). the only way I can get a clean cut into the Box is to Divide it several times to raise the poly count, then use an Alpha in zbrush to cut the detail into the face. for example say its a skull or some other alpha.

I did try to delete the faces in meshlab and fill the holes, but like you said it then had some nasty tris going all the way across that side of the 'die' etc.

I will work it out though. This has been a great help! Now, please print my spider and send it to me! lol

A single manifold object is always the best slice.  However, if you have multiple manifold objects that are close (but not intersecting) it slices OK most of the time.

The red highlights are selected facets.  They are not fixed, just selected.  You can attempt to delete the self intersecting facets (Delete key) then use the Fill Hole command, but that may have "interesting" consequences.  Best bet is to learn where your errors are occurring and then go back and check the model in facet mode.  In zBrush this may not be as easy, but then again, I don't know zBrush well.

The best pipeline is one that works for you.  Your suggestion seems a bit... long, but it would help to find and avoid mesh issues.  Like I said before, the best plan is to learn where your model is faulting, then fixing your modeling process so that you avoid those pitfalls.  Decimate will help to clean a model up, but sometimes, you need the tri-s to make a model look good.  I suggested it before because a box like that has a lot of open area and not a lot of detail.  Best export for that model would have been to take it wholesale from Maya (export as an OBJ, or STL if Maya can do that) and check that in MeshLab.  I would bet your tri-count would have been a lot lower.  For a zBrush detail model, I'd keep it whole without decimation to get the most detail out of it.

Re-orientation in netfabb works, but I think that if you're going to produce objects for printer output, I'd download either ReplicatorG or RepetierHost to install on your machine as these will allow you to re-orient in real time, and then re-save the STL in the new orientation.  Essentially, you should probably have a machine capable of 3d printing even if you don't have a printer.  This would allow you to output some pretty awesome stuff (if that spider is any indication of your modeling skills).  Look up posts by ysb as he's the resident guru on high quality figure models.

" the Self Intersecting Facets Filter (Filters->Selection->Select Self Intersecting Facets) and the Manifold Edge Filter (Filters->Selection->Select non Manifold Edges)."

...if there are highlighted red areas, when you hit Apply, does it fix them, or is there a fix button in MeshLab I need to hit to fix "seld intersecting facets" ?

For reorienting the file I was using netfabb and rotating it on its X axis, that seemed to work.  So I think my process will be  Zbrush -> stl -> netfabb to reorient -> meshlab to fix errors -> netfabb cloud to doublecheck -> get final from cloud. Does that sound like a good pipeline?

http://www.shapeways.com/model/757615/b … =my-models

for the solidoodle does it matter its oriented on its butt? or does it need to be on its legs, legs down on the ground

look at the icky stuff decimation in zbrush did to the model...bleh!

You'll want to at least use the Fill Hole feature (Edit->Fill Hole), the Self Intersecting Facets Filter (Filters->Selection->Select Self Intersecting Facets) and the Manifold Edge Filter (Filters->Selection->Select non Manifold Edges).  I use these to view the mesh and see where I may have modelling issues.  It makes it easier to know where I'm having issues modelling.

I use Carrara myself, so while not CAD, it still will output some good stuff.

EDIT:
BTW... MeshLab will take an OBJ file and translate it to an STL, so you wouldn't necessarily have to use the Maya->zBrush pipeline, unless you want to add detail to the model.

At 3x scale, this model took 21 seconds to slice as opposed to the 2 minutes for the other mesh, and looks just as clean.

http://cloud.netfabb.com/?key=cf1f67dea … ixedfile=1

I dont trust decimation master much in zbrush as it gives weird results where it tries to 'chunk' down the model. For instance in one corner of the decimated mesh there are just thousands of triangles bunched up together. the rest of the decimated mesh is fairly low poly.

EDIT:
Lowering the number of triangles would simplify the mesh.  Depending on the size of the final output, you could probably do quite a bit as the fillets don't quite need to be as high a resolution to print accurately... unless you're going for a 8x8x8 box.  Still decimation can't hurt too much, especially for something coming out of zBrush or Maya