Lots of misinformation floatin around here about 3D printing and prototyping.

Zbrush is perfectly capable of being used for prototyping and 3D print.  Here's a tutorial series on how it's done.

http://pixologic.com/zclassroom/homeroom/lesson/prototyping/

I've used 3dsmax for 3D printing objects on Shapeways.  3dsmax has a built-in .stl checker utililty, and it checks for things like holes in the mesh, overlapping edges, double faces, and other mesh errors which can screw up a 3D print,

That's all you really need to worry about.  Poly count means nothing.  You can 3D print a 4 sided square if you wanted, just as long as it's a solid, closed manifold object.

Shapeways will support a variety of applications and formats.  Check out their vast list of applications that you could use to create "printable" objects:

http://www.shapeways.com/tutorials/supported-applications

You can create 3D printable geometry in just about any application, as long as you follow some simple rules for modeling the object without errors.

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Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.