Hello to all moiers!

After the "OK" recevived by Michael I have created this new thread dedicated to who, like me, is and absolute beginner of "3D Printing" and have "zero" experience with it.

I wanted to create this new thread mainly for two reasons :

1) I play with CG for decades but I never printed anything in 3D.

2) Often I play with Moi/3D-Coat to create "3D scupltures" and I really would like to see that at least some of this "creations" could pop out of the screen :)


But...as I've said, I never played with 3D printing and I have zero experience with this aspect of CG.

Please consider that, at the moment, I don't have any intention to buy any 3D Printer on my own but I would leverage on one of the many 3D Printing service available now into the CG consumer market.

And furthermore consider that, for the moment, I don't need to 3D Print in colors, but my intention is (maybe) to "manually" paint the 3D printed models.
Maybe :)

For my "3D sculptures" I use Moi, R3F/NVIL and 3D-Coat (mainly for voxelization and sculpting)
Normally I deal with models composed by many millions of polygons, not low-poly versions, because I don't want to spend my time in the tedious work of Retopo/UVing.

So, my questions are :

A) For exporting from Moi, which format I must use : Obj or Fbx or others ?

B) Can I export the model directly from Moi in high-poly version (with the export dialog of Moi) and SEND IT DIRECTLY to the printing service without doing any kind of tweaking ?
I mean, without dealing with "normals" or any other kind of "inside" aspects ?
If I export in this way the 3D Printed object will be smoothed or it will be faceted ?
I mean, if I export a curved solids from Moi, in high-poly version, that area will be "smoothed" into the 3D printed model ?

C) In the same way, can I export directly from 3D-Coat a voxelized model having millions of polygons or I have to "decimate" it before sending to the printing service ?
Also, same considerations about "smoothed" area of the objects...

D) Do you know a good 3D printing service that I could use to make some test ?
Please consider that I don't want to print many pieces but only a very limited amount of pieces (1, or 2-3 for each model and anyway less than 10)


I can imagine that all these questions may sound a little bit messy but as I've said I have zero experience with this topic :)

Thanks to anyone who wants to take part in this conversation.

Have a nice day.

Marco (mkdm)