HUD element properties

The properties of HUD element are useful to modify the appearance, position, and size of the content it displays in the Viewer. When you click a HUD element under a HUD asset, the element properties appear in the right pane of the Navigator window.

The HUD element properties are organized into four categories.

A. Display B. Position C. Scale D. Property References

The following tables explain each property within the Display, Position, and Scale category:

Display Properties Description
Visibility To control the visibility of a HUD element content in the Viewer.

By default, this property is turned on for all HUD elements.

Turn off the checkbox to hide the content in the Viewer.

Content To enter the text that you want to display.

For dynamic elements, enter text before or after the variable %s or %d.

Font To choose a font in which the text or dynamic content should appear.

The default font is Arial.

Color RGB To increase or decrease the visibility of the HUD element content and change the font color.

The default color of the content is white.

Background Color To increase or decrease the visibility of the HUD element content background and change the background color.

Background for the content is visible, only if the value of A, in this property, is more than 0.

The dimensions of the background are directly proportional to the scaling of the content.

r, g, b, a

The r, g, b, a sub-properties are functionally similar to the R, G, B, and A color boxes in the Color RGB and Background Color properties.

Force Display As Timecode To forcefully change the format of a HUD element content from Frames to Timecode.

This property is enabled only for the EditTime and ActionTime HUD elements.

Consider that you create a scene in MotionBuilder installed on the Microsoft Windows operating system. The scene contains many HUD Text elements, each using different font (Garamond, Helevtica, and so on). Save the scene, and then load it using MotionBuilder installed on the UNIX operating system. If the UNIX operating system does not contain one or more fonts used in the scene file, then the following Warning dialog box appears.

    This dialog box lists the fonts that are unavailable and informs which font is used, instead. At first, MotionBuilder checks for the availability of the (default) Arial font. If the Arial font is not available, then it checks for the availability of the following fonts in the given order and uses them if available:

  1. Helevtica
  2. Sans
  3. FreeSans

If none of the four fonts (Arial, Helevtica, Sans, and FreeSans) are available, then the first font that appears in the HUD Text element font list is used.

Position Properties Description
Justification To set the effective position for a HUD element content in the Viewer. For example, if you want to display the content of a HUD element at the center of the Viewer, then you need to select Center from the Justification and Horizontal Dock drop down lists..
Horizontal Dock To dock an element content horizontally to the left, center, or right of the Viewer.

Docking is the global reference point, which is referred by the Justification property.

Vertical Dock To dock an element content vertically to the bottom, center, or top of the Viewer.
X To change the horizontal position of the HUD element content, relative to the docked and justified position.

Click on the property value and drag to change the position of an element along X axis. You can also double-click the box and enter a value.

Y To change the vertical position of the HUD element content, relative to the docked and justified position.

Click on the property value and drag to change the position of an element along Y axis. You can also double-click the box and enter a value.

Position by Percent To display the value of X and Y in percentage. X is the horizontal position of the HUD element as a percentage of the width of the Viewer.

Turn off the checkbox to display the value in pixels.

Scale Properties Description
Width To increase or decrease the width (horizontal scaling) of a HUD element content or background.
Height To increase or decrease the height (vertical scaling) of a HUD element content or background.
Scale by Percent To scale the width and height of a HUD element content in percentage. Deselect this checkbox to scale the element in pixels.
Scale Uniformly To uniformly increase or decrease the width and height of a HUD element content.
Adjust Width to Fit Text

    To:

  • Maintain the size when you add or delete text
  • Disable the Width property
  • Disallow to deselect the Scale Uniformly property