Yes, I considered the frame-by frame approach but don't have the patience for it right now I'm afraid (in my current pipeline there would be no way to easily batch it that I know of). I use Kerkythea almost exclusively for rendering, and anyone out there who uses Sketchup you should too, because it's free, powerful, and integrates beautifully. But it only does walkthrough animation, not motion. Probably the least amount of work I can imagine with that would be to manually set up 'frames' as copies of models in Sketchup and then move the camera between the frames to render each of them in Kerkythea, then go to virtualdub. Minimum say 3 seconds times 30fps would make that pretty hefty plus the 5/6 mins for halfway decent renders, but maybe something I'll bite the bullet and do if the design takes off.
In the nicest possible way you're treating me a little more noobish than I am. Not generally a bad move on the intercloud but just so you know. I agree with everything you've said because it's true--take a look at my shop and you'll see I practice it carefully--I'm just always open to help or a hot tip from someone who uses different software and skills than I do, and shapeways was experiencing technical difficulties re:tags and such. One of these days I am planning to get into Blender for the python scripting if nothing else, but as you say it's a multi-week job and I haven't quite had the incentive for it yet. Thought maybe there might be some obscure single-purpose app for basic animations, like a 3d version of Pencil or something that would just let me click two frames on a model and hit the big green button. Taught myself everything I know about 3d in the last year and a half since discovering Shapeways and deciding this is clearly "the next big thing" but haven't really had a need to get into animation yet. So help is definitely always appreciated, especially if it would be a pretty quick thing for your experience and setup. It would be very cool if you wanted to wait until the contest results are announced later this week, given the circumstances
. Loved your timekeeper idea, btw--got 5 stars from me! Commemorating the things that are special to us is what industrial democratisation is all about. I'd say you make top ten for sure and can't wait to see what the print looks like.
Back on topic for the thread though, I am planning to include a "standard" axle onto which designs from any material can be designed to fit--there are so many abstract designs on Shapeways that I think people would love to have if they could only give it some context instead of it just being "some thing I bought on the internet". Also, any suggestions for where people would prefer me to price the executive version? The frame will scale beautifully but big spinners and balance toys will get pricey fast once it goes north of 10cm. Or are people at all interested in this idea? Is there something that could be changed to make you interested in it? Give me some feedback people!