i always make a quickie model of my weapon for my renders on my "official nukemod" weapons (which can be seen if you downloaded my mod). i use flat shading mostly, some very simple textures.
since
of people just do single frame ani files for there ships and weapons, could we also be able to use pcx files instead of anis. when freespace sees a *.pcx file attached to the animation tag, it loads it, and omits the little sound effect. or you can have a fade-in effect and keep the sound.
for the 3d effect you could overlay it over a generic moving grid aiumation (render a grid that rotates the way the normal ani does except with out the ship and scan effect). you can then sync the movment of the model with the generic animation to produce a similar effect to the one in the freespace animations. i dont know how difficult it would be to get a ship to render on top of an animation, but its worth a try.