Ok haven't had time to do a proper tutorial, but I'll just start by im parting some wisdom to help people get started and have the model "ready" then ill follow up with more later if i get around to it. This is for a basic "NON POSEABLE" print, ie not articulated, I might cover that later down the line.
Firstly do all the importing as per this tute into blender
Then go through and pose the mech how you want it to print, as once you start this process you wont be able to repose later.
Next you want to do is click on each object, ie left calf, right arm etc etc one by one and you wish to "DECIMATE" it. it is a modifer, this simplifies the faces and makes it easier to work with. see screenshot below You wish to select Planar and thats it. (OBJECT MODE NOT EDIT MODE) then apply it.
Once you have done that, what you want to do next is start to delete all the extra "THIN" items, ie antenna, rails etc etc. THe easy way to do this is to select the component that has the part you wish to delete, Highlight ALL then split by part. This then lets you select the actual small detail only that you want to delete.
GO through and do that for all the items you wish to remove.
Next you will find "WEAK" points in the model, ie looking at the commando see the knee below, if you try and print that as you see it will be piss weak and break if you sneeze near it.
What you want to do is firstly create a box and move it over the weak area like below.
THen you want to add a subsurf modifer like below.
Now before the next step, as the weak spot is across 2 parts, i have join those 2 parts together by selection and ctrl J and rename it to something useful ie LeftLeg.
Then you wish to apply the SHRINKWRAP modifer and you will get a result as per below which makes it look a lot nicer and removes the weakpoint. Play with positions scale etc number of subdivisions, you will find what works best for that weak point.
Once you have done all the weak points and "smoothed them over" join the whole model into one big mesh (highlight all Ctrl J) and then apply a Decimate again as per what you did before.
Will cover more later on.
Edited by Tekadept, 22 March 2014 - 07:28 AM.