Yes, you've read that right. Good old Avatar Studio being used for 3D printing. One of the problems with this technology is that requires valid 3D meshes to correctly print an object. It's not as easy as it sounds. Most meshes will have errors, non-manifold edges, holes and other problems that create bad prints- The cool thing about Avatar Studio is that it generates a perfectly printable mesh. Low poly, valid, whithout problems. It's possible to design characters with this oldie but useful app and then print them.
How? There are some operations that have to be made to create a 3D print from Avatar Studio. First, design your character and ensure that the default pose is the one you want. If not, the character will be standing in the default avatar position. Then, navigate to the avatars folder in the Avatar Studio installation and copy the VRML file. I'm using a single filament printer, therefore the texture map is not needed. Before opening the WRL file in meshlab, open it in Vivaty Studio to delete the h-anim skeleton. Export the mesh as VRML non-compressed and open it in Meshlab to convert it to STL. Use netfabb to validate the STL file, and print it with your 3D printer software (I'm using beesoft to control a beethefirst printer). You may need to choose the supports option for the printer to be able to correctly print overhangs.
In this case I've also created a base in Sketchup. Here the process is slighly different. From Meshlab export the character as Collada and import it into Sketchup. Sketchup will not recognize the object as a solid, so you can't use the outer shell tool to create a single mesh. Place the character on top of the base, export the result as collada. Return to Meshlab to convert to STL. Then, open Meshmixer, import the STL file and use the Make Solid tool to glue all the faces. Beware: Meshmixer generates very high poly meshes, so you may need to open the resulting mesh in Meshlab to do a mesh reduction (the quadric edge decimation works wonders). When you're satisified with the result... print it.
These techiniques work very well with basic Avatar Studio meshes (the man or the woman). I've yet to experiment with a mesh that includes long clothes. Here there might be a problem, if the clothes are displayed as a single surface.
3D printing is getting easier but preparing objects for printing still requires some work. This is a cool way to print humanoid characters created using the venerable Avatar Studio.