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🧍Characters

HLD displays are great ways to enable new types of interactivity and connection. These guidelines will help you get the most of your display.

Safe areas

Placing people in the alcove correctly is an important part of the 3D effect of the HLD displays. The diagrams below show some examples of correct and incorrect placement.

In the first example, you'll see the character has a proper shadow, correct reflection, and is placed properly in the alcove, while the other two examples place the character outside the alcove, resulting in a degradation of the 3D effect.

In general, the main rules we recommend are:

  • Don't place the character outside the alcove.

  • Don't place the character so that it overlaps the top of the alcove.

Harold is comfortable inside the alcove and has room to move around.
Harold isn't standing inside the alcove; this can break the 3D effect.
Harold is too tall and is intersecting with the top of the alcove.

Movement

There's a lot of freedom to animate your character as you please. These are a few examples of the kinds of motion we recommend. Generally you'll want to keep your character standing and centered in the alcove. Having your character go off screen is not recommended as it can break the 3D effect.

Harold can dance! Though his moves may need a bit of work, in this example he's not moving too far from the center of the alcove.
Harold likes to talk; he's got enough space in the alcove to move around and wave without intersecting the alcove's edges.

Shadows

Subtle shadows can increase the effect of realism in the HLD display. It's important to have the shadow be additive but not too harsh — it is meant to compliment the main content in the scene, not distract from it.

Shadows should be on the floor of the alcove and should generally not be cast on the back wall of the alcove.

Harold has a subtle drop shadow, which helps lend realism to the 3D effect.
In this case, Harold has a heavily blurred shadow on the back wall, which can alleviate some of the distractions caused by a harsher sharp shadow.
Harold has a harsh, sharp shadow cast on the floor and back of the alcove. This should be avoided as it will distract from the parallax effect.

Reflections

Reflections likewise should be subtle. In our work we've found there are two reliable ways to generate reflections depending on your content's origin. If you're working with content that is filmed, you can generate an effective reflection in video editing tools by translating the original content, adjusting the opacity, transform, and distortion to give a convincing reflection. For traditional content, this can require two reflection layers for each foot depending on how your character is posed.

For 3D content, placing a plane at the bottom of the scene and having it render as its own layer will allow you to properly compose the effect in Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, or your video editor of choice.

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