u/Critical_Eye_1190

Hey all!

I'm getting into watch design and have been making models in plasticity and then throwing them into blender, putting material on everything, HDR, and an infinite beveled plane. I think these are looking pretty cool! But still definitely look like they come from a computer.

My goal is to make these look like real product photos, that way I can gauge interest in these watches before starting any kind of manufacturing process.

Any tips on getting these to the next level of quality? Curious if I need to focus on lighting, finding better materials, messing with the render settings.. any clear wins?

Also this is my first post please be kind!

Getting married next month at San Francisco city hall, and I have (pretty much) narrowed it down to a Longines Conquest Heritage. I LOVE silver sunburst but then every time I see the black dial something deep inside of me longs for it.

And then of course there are the 60s Omega Seamasters that I can still hear off in the distance (these were my first choice until this week).

HELP!

iOS:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/birdr-birding-bird-guide/id6761167834

web:
https://birdrapp.com

Hey r/Ornithology!

Still working hard on Birdr every day, and am absolutely loving the community we're building. Proud to announce our latest update includes on device photo and sound identification, so now you can ID birds when you're out in the field and out of cell tower range.

Birdr is 100% free and on the app store! 📱
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/birdr-birding-bird-id/id6761167834

Web app as well 👩‍💻

https://birdrapp.com

I go to a lot of shows and I kept having the same problem: I'd find out an artist I love announced a tour two weeks after tickets went on sale. Or I'd see the presale announcement on Instagram at 11pm, forget by morning, and end up paying double on resale. So I built Giggy. You sign up with your phone number and city, then text it a Spotify playlist link (or just artist names, or a screenshot of your listening stats.. whatever you want really). It adds every artist to a watchlist and monitors several ticket sources. When one of them announces a show near you, it texts you once with the date, venue, presale info, and a ticket link. That's it. No app to download, no feed to check, no push notifications to ignore. Just a text when something actually matters. You also get a personal dashboard where you can see all your upcoming shows in one place, save shows you're interested in, track what your friends are going to, and manage your watchlist. It's basically your whole concert calendar without having to piece it together from five different apps. A few things that might be relevant:

• It's free, no catch
• Works over SMS or Telegram
• You can text it naturally ("add Khruangbin", "mute Lana", "what's coming up?") and it just handles it
• It tracks presales and on-sale dates specifically, not just tour announcements
• You can watch multiple cities if you travel for shows
• The dashboard gives you a full view of everything coming up, with ticket links and prices across sources

The site is giggy.live if anyone wants to try it. Happy to answer questions about how it works!

Hey r/buildinpublic !

The problem: Never knowing when my favorite artists are playing in my city.

The solution: Giggy 👋

I've been building Giggy, your personal show agent. You can either text him or set up your dashboard here. Enter your phone number, some artists that you never want to miss, and your city, and you'll get a text anytime one of your favorite artists comes through.

Using Telnyx for SMS, Claude haiku and sonnet for skilled agent tasks, and pulling in a ton of different ticket data feeds, as well as crawling venue schedules.

We're also displaying all ticketing options for each show, so you can shop around before you purchase to find the best deal.

Would love if you checked it out! Open to feedback but also please just use it! It's honestly changed my concert life so much already.

https://giggy.live/

I go to a lot of shows and I kept having the same problem: I'd find out an artist I love announced a tour two weeks after tickets went on sale. Or I'd see the presale announcement on Instagram at 11pm, forget by morning, and end up paying double on resale.

So I built Giggy. You sign up with your phone number and city, then text it a Spotify playlist link (or just artist names, or a screenshot of your listening stats.. whatever you want really). It adds every artist to a watchlist and monitors several ticket sources. When one of them announces a show near you, it texts you once with the date, venue, presale info, and a ticket link. That's it.

No app to download, no feed to check, no push notifications to ignore. Just a text when something actually matters.

You also get a personal dashboard where you can see all your upcoming shows in one place, save shows you're interested in, track what your friends are going to, and manage your watchlist. It's basically your whole concert calendar without having to piece it together from five different apps.

A few things that might be relevant:

• It's free, no catch
• Works over SMS or Telegram
• You can text it naturally ("add Khruangbin", "mute Lana", "what's coming up?") and it just handles it
• It tracks presales and on-sale dates specifically, not just tour announcements
• You can watch multiple cities if you travel for shows
• The dashboard gives you a full view of everything coming up, with ticket links and prices across sources

The site is giggy.live if anyone wants to try it. Happy to answer questions about how it works.

I go to a lot of shows and I kept having the same problem: I'd find out an artist I love announced a tour two weeks after tickets went on sale. Or I'd see the presale announcement on Instagram at 11pm, forget by morning, and end up paying double on resale.

So I built Giggy. You sign up with your phone number and city, then text it a Spotify playlist link (or just artist names, or a screenshot of your listening stats.. whatever you want really). It adds every artist to a watchlist and monitors several ticket sources. When one of them announces a show near you, it texts you once with the date, venue, presale info, and a ticket link. That's it.

No app to download, no feed to check, no push notifications to ignore. Just a text when something actually matters.

You also get a personal dashboard where you can see all your upcoming shows in one place, save shows you're interested in, track what your friends are going to, and manage your watchlist. It's basically your whole concert calendar without having to piece it together from five different apps.

A few things that might be relevant:

• It's free, no catch
• Works over SMS or Telegram
• You can text it naturally ("add Khruangbin", "mute Lana", "what's coming up?") and it just handles it
• It tracks presales and on-sale dates specifically, not just tour announcements
• You can watch multiple cities if you travel for shows
• The dashboard gives you a full view of everything coming up, with ticket links and prices across sources

The site is giggy.live if anyone wants to try it. Happy to answer questions about how it works.

[removed]

Hey r/LearnBirding 👋

I'm the creator of Birdr (the only birding app you need), and I just wanted to share that we have bird id quizzes on our app to help you identify birds by both photo and song/call. It's a completely free app, and I'd love any and all feedback!

https://www.birdrapp.com/
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/birdr-birding-bird-id/id6761167834

Tried a new birding spot and thought it was a dud, on our way back to the car we saw this guy.

Hey r/ornithology!

Last month we launched Birdr (birdrapp.com), and received so much love and support from this community, so I thought I’d post an update.

Firstly, wow. I can’t believe how active even this small user base (~200) is on a daily basis. Even more fun, we have Birdrs from all parts of the world! It’s such a joy opening the app everyday and seeing all the birds from around the world you’re seeing in your everyday life.

This app is a labor of love for sure. But it makes it that much more fun to work on knowing y’all are in here everyday, and more importantly, y’all are OUT there. Since getting into this hobby, I’ve realized there’s nothing else in my life that brings me such calm tranquility. Birding is a time where I completely disconnect from our digital world, and totally reconnect with nature.

Come join us over at Birdr 🦜
https://birdrapp.com

iOS app:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/birdr-birding-bird-id/id6761167834

A few days ago I crossposted our app here with basically zero context, and some of you still took the time to ask great questions. The mods suggested I come back with a proper post, so here goes.

My son and I built Birdr together. We got into birding and kept running into the same problem: we needed one app for sighting maps, another for ID, another for our life list, another for the field guide, and none of them really had a community we wanted to be part of. We wanted one solid app that did all of it well, and we wanted to build a community of birders around it. We also wanted something that encourages people to look up instead of down at their devices all day.

What Birdr actually does

Birdr is an all-in-one birding companion: Photo and sound identification, a live sighting map powered by eBird data, user specified alert zones that will push notifications the moment a bird you're looking for is in your area, a life list, a global field guide with over 11,000 species, and a community feed. It runs on iOS and web, and will be on Android in the future.

One feature worth calling out is the bird alerts. You set up alert zones around the places you bird, pick the species you're watching for, and get notified when they show up nearby. Free users get one zone and one target bird, but Pro opens that up to unlimited zones and targets.

We also built a Skill Builder, which is an interactive quiz system with both photo ID and sound ID challenges. You see a bird (or hear a call), pick from multiple choices, and get hints about field marks along the way. The idea is to train your eye and ear so you get better at IDing birds in the field on your own, not to create a dependency on AI doing it for you.

"How is this different from eBird?"

This was the top question on my last post, and it's a fair one. eBird is an incredible tool and we actually pull live sighting data from their API for our real-time map. We are not trying to replace eBird. The difference is that eBird is primarily a data collection and reporting platform for citizen science. Birdr is focused on the individual birder's learning journey. The skill builder, the gamification, the community feed, the trip planning -- those are things eBird wasn't really designed to do. Think of Birdr as a complement to eBird, not a competitor.

The conservation angle

A portion of every Birdr Pro subscription goes directly to a conservation partner that the subscriber chooses: Cornell Lab of Ornithology, National Audubon Society, American Bird Conservancy, or World Land Trust. We wanted the app to give back to the organizations doing the real work.

Free vs. Pro

The free version is fully functional. You get the live sighting map, rare bird alerts, the full field guide, life list tracking, the community feed, and basic skill quizzes. No ads, no paywalls gating core features.

Pro ($4.17/mo billed annually, or a lifetime option) is mainly about the bird alerts. Free users get 1 alert zone and 1 target bird. Pro gives you unlimited alert zones and unlimited bird targets, so you can cover every spot you bird and track every species you're chasing. Pro also adds 100 AI photo IDs per day (vs 20 free), offline maps and field guide, advanced life list views, and field notes with media sync. Plus, your money actually goes to a bird conservatory of your choice.

Links

• iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/birdr-birding-bird-id/id6761167834
• Web: birdrapp.com

Happy to answer any questions. Last time around the comments were better than the post, so fire away.

EDIT:

I've had a TON of asks about an Android release, and honestly the biggest hurdle with that is that I need 14 test users to test the app for two weeks before it can be released on the Google Play store. If you're on Android and interested in helping me see this along, and want to be one of the test users, PLEASE dm me an email I can send a test invite to. Thanks 🤖

My son (11) and I got into birding together this past Christmas, and about a month ago we decided to try building an app called Birdr. It kind of took on a life of its own.

It does bird ID by photo or sound (BirdNET for audio), has a live sighting map from eBird, life list tracking, and some learning tools with quizzes on songs and field marks. My son is obsessed with the quiz part and now IDs stuff faster than I can.

A portion of every Pro subscription goes to the American Bird Conservancy. The free version covers most of what you'd need and there are no ads.

It's on iOS. Would love to know what you all think, and my son will definitely be reading the comments.

https://birdrapp.com