The Anything Can Be A Clock plugin is something I whipped to allow you to run clocks in Blender.

It can be run in the scripts tab, or installed like any add-on.

You pick any object to be an hour hand, minute hand, and second hand, then you can run a live clock in the viewport, and even keyframe both realistic and scaled time in your Scene.

Instructions

Choose at least one hand. You can choose an Hour, Minute, and Second hand. If you want realistic time, set your clock to 12:00:00.

Reset clock will reset the hands to default position.

Set Current Time will move the hands to the current time.

Start (and Stop) Time will start a live clock in the viewport. This clock should keep accurate time even if rendering the viewport.

Set Time will set the sime to whatever you choose.

Important:

• Each hand will rotate around its own origin.
• You can specify the rotation plane as X, Y or Z, and inverted or not, for the rotation of each hand
• Make sure your object has transformations applied and that your origins are set before keyframing.
• The FPS setting in the keyframer should match your scene if you want the clock to keep time in your animation.
• The scale can be used to speed things up: a scale of 2 means it’s twice as fast as real time.

Support Me

If you enjoy what I’m doing and want to help support me, click below!

Development

I’ve begun trying to teach myself python in blender so I can make my own plugins. the first one I’ve written is the Anything Can Be  Clock plugin, which lets you pick objects, pick their axis of rotation, and you can then run a live clock in the blender viewport, or keyframe accurate time movement in your animations.

The latest version has split the axis out for each hand. I’ve also added a “scale” feature to make time move faster. 

An early test with a light as the seconds hand. 

An earlier test showing single axis and no keyframe generation.