How to 3D print your Xbox avatar at home

There are options on the web where you can dish out the cash to have someone 3D print your avatar for you so that you could have a tangible copy of it to display at home. These can be costly for what it is. However, if you are artistic when it comes to painting and have a 3D printer at home, you can do it all yourself quite easily.

First before anything, head to the Microsoft Store within Windows 10 and look for the app called “Xbox Avatar Editor“. This is where you are going to extract your avatar to a 3D model.

Open the app once it is installed. Edit your avatar if you like, or just head straight to “Photobooth” in the left menu of icons. Wait for it to load, and then look to the left again. Look for the camera icon, but click on the icon of a box below it instead. This opens a save as window where you will save a 3D model file of your avatar to your computer somewhere.

Now, you have a 3D model of your avatar to work with. Importing it directly into your slicer might result in it telling you that there are missing details in it. So you will want to import the model into an editor first.

If you are experienced with 3D design, you could open it in something like Fusion 360 and play around with it all you want. If you aren’t that familiar, just open “3D Builder” (within Windows 10) on your PC and open it from that (if you don’t have it, you can download it free here). If it asks for a texture file, then it will be in a folder saved in the same spot as the model file. From here. “save as” a “.3mf” file. Between opening the file or saving it, it should correct any discrepancies in the original file (it did in our experience).

Now take that 3mf file and open it with your slicer (we use Cura). It “shouldn’t” show any errors in the model (in a slicer, they are usually highlighted in odd colors or it will pop up some kind of an error/warning).

From here, make sure the model is rotated so that it is standing tall. We find printing it while it is laying on its back can result in some roughness across the back of the print. You use slightly more support structure to print it upright, but the surface front and back ends up being smoother. Absolutely use supports, but that is a given for something like this.

Apply all of the settings you’d like to use for it, and size it larger or smaller to your needs. Slice it and send it to the print and let it rip.

You will then have your very own 3D printed version of your Xbox avatar. The entire process is pretty simple and it doesn’t take long at all to go from start to actually printing. Unless of course, you are well-experienced in 3D design and decide to spice the model up somehow before doing anything. You can now break out your acrylic paints and customize the color of it to your needs.

We did find that if you print the avatar directly from the exported file from the Avatar Editor app, those sections of the print with missing or abstract data causes the final result to be a little off. In the image to the right (another version of the avatar we tested with), the model didn’t come out as nice, and the back of the neck was missing something as if the model wasn’t complete. So absolutely import it into something first and double-check it all, and then in the slicer to make sure there are no errors. You should get perfect print every time.

Happy printing!