STL file woahs

So my original idea was to make some cylinders in Solidworks, save them as STL files and then port them over to 3DS Max where I can stretch and bend and warp em, make em look all muscle-and-tendon-y. Didn't work.

What I didnt realize is that when a file is saved as an STL it is compressed as much as it can possibly be, I guess that's for 3D printers. They'd probably shit themselves if they were asked to print something with millions of faces.

What this means for my process is that none of the cylinders have more than one face on the horizontal faces (up the sides), so when I make this:

and then convert it into STL format, it wont bend. Unfortunately I don't have a screen grab to show what I mean :P you'll just have to use your imagination.