A mechanical
wristwatch.
Modelled, lit and rendered. Not drawn.
Every part was built in three dimensions. Then photographed under studio light. The case, the dial, the hands, the crown. What you see is light on metal. And it runs on the real time of day.
In preparation for the App Store
Recorded from a running escapement. Eight beats a second.
A drawn watch
looks drawn.
The first attempts drew the dial live. Circles, gradients, a shadow underneath. It looked like software. A real dial is not a gradient. It is a brushed disc turning under a light. The eye knows the difference long before it can say why.
So the watch is not drawn at all. It was modelled part by part. Each part got a real material. Then it was photographed in a virtual light tent at 2400 by 2400 pixels. The app stacks those photographs and turns them. Every surface you see was rendered, down to the knurling on the crown.
A flat face reads as plastic under soft light. Whatever it is made of. Five parts were rebuilt before that sank in. The case, the bridges, the chaton, the setting. What helped was never a different metal. It was a bevel, a step, a dome.
Eight beats
a second.
The window at six o'clock is not decoration. Behind it the balance wheel swings at four hertz. The train advances one tooth every second. That is 28,800 beats per hour. It is the rate a modern automatic movement actually runs at.
Hands, wheels and sound read from a single counter. Nothing drifts apart. The second hand does not sweep. It steps, eight times a second, the way a mechanical watch does.
The rendered wheel has 49 teeth. The step uses 30. With 49 the rim would land tooth on tooth every second. It would appear to stand still. The wheel could not show its own rotation.
The numbers behind it.
- Beat
- 28,800 A/height steps per second
- Balance
- 4 Hz135° of swing
- Masters
- 2400 pxrendered, not drawn
- Hands
- Four statesre-lit for their position
- Date
- 31 digitseach one rendered
- Sound
- Three volumesor off
- Network
- Nonethe app never connects
- Account
- Nonenothing to sign up for
Full screen
Portrait or landscape. A long press opens the settings.
The same watch
One core, one set of renders, both devices.
A floating window
Sits above the work, resizable, with an optional login start.