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

• Display — To modify the appearance of an element
• Position — To change the position of an element in the scene
• Scale — To increase or decrease the size of an element, along the X and Y axis
• Property References — Displays the property name, which is referred by the HUD element to display the property value in the Viewer. For example, to display the current take name, the TakeName HUD element refers the value (Take 001) in the HUD.TakeName property.
  Note: The Property References category appears only for the dynamic HUD elements.

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.

To change the HUD element content font color:

• Click on the R, G, or B color box and drag the cursor

  or

• Double-click on any of the R, G, or B boxes and enter a value from 0.00 to 1.00 (default value is 1.00)

  or

• Click the button to open the Color window and pick a color of your choice. See the Color window topic.
Note: Perform any one of the above actions to change the background color of the HUD element content as well.

To increase or decrease the visibility level of the HUD element content:

• Click on the A (Alpha) box and drag the cursor

  or

• Double-click the A box and enter a value from 0.00 to 1.00 (default value is 1.00).

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