1. hand craft 48 separate animations depending on the dice orientation
Oh, you mean having the numbers on while rolling! I see; I was thinking just showing the rolling without the numbers — as a little trick, you can even make the die seem a little blurry while it rolls (fast). (I was considering not displaying the numbers while rolling in my own game as a simple solution. A moot point, since I ran into trouble displaying them at all. X)) Seeing the rolling animation plus the numbers before and after the movement is enough for the brain to process what is going on. For a cool example (which is not isometric, but still in a bit of perspective, although only really displaying the top face, but this is beyond the point), see The High Roller (Hardly Working Inc), where I thought this caused no trouble.
I agree this gets way more complicated in you want to have a true fully numbered/displayed animation, a problem I quickly identified when thinking of how to display things, but sometimes, you have to swop realism for efficiency! Especially when pushed for time.
