grogbro wrote: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.
