Well, as it turns out, a friend managed to put together a Sketchup file that can export an animation of a model spinning in 36 frames. Using styles I've been able to mimic render quality. It's not perfect, but good enough for my purposes.
Thanks for your help!
First my problem. I've been designing spaceships in Sketchup 7 (free) for a while now but have yet to render or texture anything. A friend suggested I try Blender, claiming it's a powerful application that can do whatever I need it to. Unfortunately, Blender has disappointed me.
Most of the time, Blender crashes when trying to import my models after I've exported them into .dae files (the only way Blender will even try importing them). Even when it does successfully import, I can't get it to texture anything at all. I have no doubt I'm missing something critical in the process of using Blender, but I obviously don't have the expertise needed to figure out what it is I am missing.
However, I am not here asking for help in using Blender. In fact I am here to ask for advice on what other rendering applications anyone here can suggest I try instead of Blender for texturing, painting, and rendering my models.
I have Sketchup 7 (free) and a Macbook running OSX 10.5, Intel chip. If you need more info, just ask. Thanks in advance for any help anyone can provide.