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HOLOFIL-cardboard instructions
READ ALL INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY FOR BEST RESULTS
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First part of the instructions are to assemble the HOLOFIL-cardboard device from its separate parts. There are some minor improvements since the first release in 2022, that are mentioned in the appropriate text sections around, while the video instructions are for the first release, so look slightly different. So please do read the text sections around to understand the minor improvements to avoid confusion.
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The second part of instructions are for how to pair the Bluetooth gamepad controller with your mobile device and use game settings to start playing the HOLOFIL-cardboard games. iOS and Android have different sequence of button presses to start the controllers including resetting.
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The third part of instructions are about lighting conditions and brightness and how not to use the device to avoid issues in best visual experience. Optical devices are highly sensitive to lighting conditions. In video instructions the back light placement is shown differently, but then in the separate section text added later with a supporting picture it is properly explained how to place the backlight for the best experience. So please read and follow the diagram to place the back light on top of the hole correctly.
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The fourth part of instructions is about gamepad charging if you have the Bluetooth controller with inbuilt battery.
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The fifth part of instructions is about the MXPlayer Mediaplayer we recommend to play 3D animations and its settings.
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The last part of instructions are guidelines, if you intend to create your own 3D animations for HOLOFIL.
Read this if you bought your product before dec 2022
Before you watch the assembly video instructions, please check if you have any glue which can be used to glue cardboard. If its a thick glue its even better to level out slight uneven surface differences. If you don't have, please buy one. Ensure it can bond paper / cardboard as a material quickly, as some glues will not glue paper / cardboard material, even if they can glue wood, rubber, metal types of materials.
If you have our early device components (Before Dec 2022), there are two places in the end during assembly for extra strong bond you need to use glue. We would love to ship you a small glue pouch like in the picture above in our package, but transportation rules for packaging does not allow packing glue as it falls under chemical category and then it becomes an issue during postage declaration. Make sure you remove existing thin tape before gluing to get a firm adhesion.
Read this if you bought your product after dec 2022
We keep on improving the product incrementally as per customer feedback. For all products purchased after Dec 2022, there has been lot of improvements in the product in terms of assembly experience.
We realized the original yellow glue tapes you see in the product were not strong enough at some places which has immense stress, so at some places with extreme stress to hold, we upgraded with more stronger glue tapes which have RED color. Aim here is to ensure you can assemble without need to use glue. However, the backside curved paper component part which has two thin strips of RED tape at two ends of rectangular strip (see below picture) might not hold due to too less surface area of glue tape and start giving up due to immense stress after a few days or immediately some times. Some times it can just hold without issues. We would advise you to then see if you can buy a strong glue that can glue paper cardboard material and use it to glue the curved part in the back with the body, if it starts to loosen up. Ensure you clean the surface to be glued by removing the old glue tape to ensure the new glue you apply bonds properly to the two surface.
As we keep on improving the product experience, the video instructions below, are pre-Dec-2022 version, so it will still ask you to glue some of the components, which you can ignore, as in video you will not find the RED strong thick tape that can hold much stronger. The bottom line is if you see a RED tape instead of yellow, you need to remove RED cover and glue that part at the appropriate position.
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Mobile phone holder cut out instructions
Assembly instruction video
For better understanding first watch the entire video before actual assembly, to get an overview. Then before permanently fixing two components during assembly, first just try positioning them to ensure the alignment is perfect like a demo exercise, before you permanently couple them. This will ensure you are not making alignment mistakes.
This video is our original instructions video with the version 1 in 2022 release. We have since then improved the experience by some improvements in the gluing requirements by providing stronger glue tape that has RED color. Please see these components with RED tape in the picture earlier in previous section. While watching the video below just keep in mind when these components in RED color tape appear, that they don't need to be glued with an external glue (unlike explained in the video), except the two thin RED strip back paper in some cases if it loosens up. It is incredibly difficult to keep on updating new videos as we keep on adding new improvements incrementally, so please excuse us for the inconvenience, and use the below video as a reference to improvise further. Please do read the text in the rest of the sections on this page as well to understand how to position the back light, or cutting hole in mobile paper holder or pair blue-tooth controllers and other aspects in the text as the text can be updated easily with appropriate improvements than new video shoot to include these improvements. So the related text sections on this page will have the latest updated instructions than the video, while video covers fundamental technique and not minor improvements if any that we do always from the customer feedback.
READ THIS FIRST PLEASE - The backside curved paper should wrap around nicely on the back side curved edges of the main cardboard casing, without leaving any side gaps through which light might otherwise enter inside the device from backside. We have kept 2 mm extra paper on each edge side to give sufficient width for complete wrapping around the curved edges. Hence, ensure careful symmetrical alignment while wrapping the paper on the side curved edges, before fixing the paper permanently on both the ends of the carboard casing body with the glue at top and yellow tape at bottom. Do a mock exercise of paper wrapping fully correctly with a perfect alignment before permanently fixing the paper to the main body.
HOLOFIL-cardboard assembly instruction
Play Video
Instructions for playing games with black micro-USB bluetooth controller
Bluetooth gamepad will behave in haphazard manner once its charge goes low. So please charge fully if you start seeing unresponsive or strange behavior.
NOTE CAREFULLY from below the sequence to pair the Android and iOS devices, as they have different starting steps in terms of sequence of buttons to enable Android / iOS mode.
Instructions for playing games with GREEn bluetooth controller
Customers who bought the product after Nov 2024 will have a Green color new Bluetooth controller as the old black smaller sized micro-USB rechargeable controller is out of production from the manufacturer. The new Green one is a better controller, however, it is not micro-USB chargeable and operates on two external AAA batteries. We suggest to always keep the batteries out when not in use so they do not drain, which helps prolong their life. We apologize for the inconvenience of the lack of micro-USB controller.
Bluetooth gamepad will behave in haphazard manner once its charge goes low. So please replace batteries if you start seeing unresponsive or strange behavior.
NOTE CAREFULLY from below the sequence to pair the Android and iOS devices, as they have different starting steps in terms of sequence of buttons press to enable Android / iOS mode separately.
Download the original scanned paper manual of the controller from the manufacturer, in case you want to see all the modes available and not only the above two for our device usage specific. DOWNLOAD here.
HOLOFIL Pachuman - 3D
HOLOFIL snake -3D
HOLOFIL bounce ball
HOLOFIL blocks-3D
Use the Android only Bluetooth interactive app to interact with 3D models to rotate, move, scale with Bluetooth controller. Use this same app to create 3D animations with our free 3D marketplace to try various experiences. Read more about the app usage here.
instructions for brightness / reflections / LED light
Device next to window with sun light
Device 5 feet away from window
Please operate the device away from direct sunlight as direct sunlight will throw away lots of reflections like you see in the first image above where you will start seeing the black paper holding mobile getting reflected. In the first image above, the device is kept next to a big window with direct sunlight entering. Also please do not keep under spot light etc. directly, but away from any kind of direct spot lights to avoid reflections.
For best results always operate away from direct lights on top of the device. Diffused lights are always good. Any kind of indoor light as long as its not directly on the device is ok. In the second image the device is just moved five feet away from the window and you can see the dramatic improvement in the cutting off the reflections of the paper.
Optical devices are highly sensitive to sunlight and its a common problem with almost all optical devices.
The LED light inside should be always switched ON during all types of device usage and should be placed such that its positioned (as shown in the picture above with the light ON/OFF switch side in the direction of the mobile phone) illuminating all the area inside uniformly, and does not excessively tilt to the back or the front creating shadows inside. So an uniformly lit area inside with LED light creates the best visual effect than only back or front illuminated area. If needed, try a few positions you feel comfortable with, ensuring it lights up the entire area inside without shadows in the front or back of device.
Position the light such that the light itself does not throw its own reflection in the device glass below.
Do not push LED in the rectangular hole, but gently place and leave it there without forcing it to fit inside the hole. It is not supposed to go inside the rectangular hole, but just rest there, and be movable to position in different directions.
Do you still get reflections?
1. Make sure you have cut the hole in the paper exactly only exposing the screen area so that the mobile edges are not reflected. If you accidently cut bigger hole, just cover extra hole using the same black paper you cut earlier.
2. Make sure you align the mobile holding paper in cage by moving it slightly to see if it cuts off reflections. The folded mobile holding paper needs to be always in a flat position in the mobile cage holder and should not be getting lifted. You can even glue the folded paper together to make two flaps always stay in flat position and not get lifted.
3. Make sure you have followed LED light positioning properly as described earlier in brightness section on this page.
4. Make sure your mobile screen brightness is at least 50% and the screen does not time out and power off.
Do you still face issues?
Please write to us at contact@holofil.com with the issues you are facing and we will help you sort them out.
Gamepad controller charging
Even if you are not using the gamepad, to keep its battery in healthy condition it should be charged at least once in every 5 months, else the battery will go weak as it will lose charge. So ensure the battery is charged at least once in 5 months.
Make sure the controller is always in the GAME mode by turning the switch on the side to GAME mode.
When charging the gamepad will show RED LED light on.
When the charging is full the Red LED will be off. The working time is around 40 hours once fully charged.
When on low charge the RED LED will start flashing indicating its time to charge.
When the gamepad battery is low on charge the controller actions will turn weird that it will stop responding to joystick, buttons in a proper way and shows arbitrary actions. It's also an indication to charge the gamepad.
Eventually if the battery becomes weak after extensive heavy usages you can always continue to play while the controller is plugged in to charge or simple replace it with the exact same from local market.
To start the gamepad controller with Android and iOS devices please read the instructions about pairing the gamepad controller as each step is different.
To switch OFF the gamepad keep pressing the start button for at least 10 seconds when the LED light should turn Blue and then turn OFF.
3D animations playback using MXplayer
1. Install from the above two links for Android or iOS for your smartphone platform.
2. To play 3D animations on your smartphone, we recommend MXPlayer as a media player to play the 3D animations mp4 files in a loop setting, so they keep on playing continuously.
3. Ensure your smartphone screen brightness is at least 50% for best effect.
4. MXplayer has its own screen brightness setting which overrides the brightness of native smart phone setting, so ensure the MXPlayer brightness from its screen settings is always full that is on number 15.
Problems installing MXPlayer ? - If there is any issue in installing MXPlayer, you can search for any video player that can play regular mp4 video files in a loop (repeatedly) in full screen and use that instead, ensuring the screen brightness is optimal. For example VLC media player should work as well.
generic guidelines for 3d animations creations
If you want to create your own 3D content. you can do it using the two methods as described below.
1. Use HOLOFIL-X app to upload 3D models and export simple 360 degree turntable mp4 file 3D animations and then play them in HOLOFIL-cardboard. You can find many 3D models for free on Internet on 3D marketplaces (Search Free 3D models on Google to check). Visit our 3D for kids tutorial page for 3D basics understanding such as file formats etc.
2. Use Free software such as Blender to build 3D models from scratch (like a 3D artist) and animate them yourself further and export a mp4 3D animation file that can be played in HOLOFIL-cardboard.
Below are the most common guidelines for most effective 3D animations that look best in HOLOFIL devices.
1. Always use Black background.
2. Keep the camera always in the front view as if your eye is the camera always watching the content inside. Do not do weird camera movements as your aim is to create a holographic illusion, which means you want the whole object to be present inside the device as if its really there.
3. Do not let the object go out of the visual area by cutting the corners of the visual area and always keep the entire object visible in view because that is your aim, to see the entire object to create the illusion of a hologram.
4. Be aware of the scale / size of the object to ensure its not too small or too big in the visual area.
5. Always use strong contrasting bright colors on Black background for great visibility.
6. Keep your 3D models well lit and ensure the models have enough brightness to make them look bright.
7. Avoid cluttering too many 3D objects in a single scene and keep the scene simple. Lesser the objects, better is the final effect.
8. If more than one object is in the scene, you can simulate depth by playing with the depth of field as objects come and go out of focus relative to each other during motion, or play with relative speed of objects to simulate depth cues for your brain to create a strong 3D effect.
9. As you get better with simple animations try more VFX effects with tools such as Adobe After Effects etc.
Some common softwares being used for content creation
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Blender - 3D modeling and animations
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Cinema4d - 3D modeling and animations
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Maya / 3D studio max - 3D modeling and animations
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Keyshot - Renderings and 3D animations
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Adobe after effects - Special effects / VFX on already created animations, or create new from scratch animations such as motion graphics, particle effects etc.
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Adobe premier pro - Video editing and special effects
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Unity game engine - Unreal game engine - Interactive content that requires programming and interactivity such as with Bluetooth controller or otherwise.
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