Anamorphic billboards: what they are and how the 3D illusion works

What is an anamorphic billboard?

An anamorphic billboard is a digital screen that plays a 3D scene rendered for one viewing spot. From that spot, the content seems to have real depth, and objects seem to come out of the screen. The screen is an ordinary LED screen. The illusion lives in the content: perspective, shadows and a frame built for where people stand.

You will see the same thing called a 3D billboard, anamorphic 3D, anamorphic advertising, naked-eye 3D or 3D digital out-of-home. We call our version 3DOOH, our anamorphic billboard service. On flat screens, the same trick is often called forced perspective. Different names, one principle.

People also search for “anamorphic screen” or “anamorphic LED screen”. Strictly, there is no such hardware. Any good LED screen can show anamorphic content. What makes a screen anamorphic is the file it plays. Our guide to the anamorphic screen covers shapes, sizes and how the content is made.

Anamorphic meaning: an old trick with a Greek name

The word comes from the Greek ana (back, again) and morphe (shape). An anamorphosis is an image distorted on purpose, so that it only takes its true shape from one point of view.

Artists have played with it for five centuries. The earliest known example is a sketch of an eye in Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks. The most famous one hangs in London: Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors, painted in 1533. A long gray shape floats across the floor between the two men. Stand close to the painting on its right side, look across it, and the shape becomes a skull.

Pavement artists use the same rule today. A 3D chalk drawing looks like a hole in the street from one spot and like a stretched smudge from everywhere else.

An anamorphic billboard is that idea on an LED screen: moving, lit, and the size of a building.

Not the anamorphic lens of cinema

In film, “anamorphic” means something else. An anamorphic lens squeezes a wide image onto a narrower frame, and the projector stretches it back out. That is how CinemaScope and Panavision got their widescreen look, and why cinematographers talk about “anamorphic” footage. It has nothing to do with 3D billboards, apart from the shared idea of an image distorted on purpose.

How does a 3D billboard work?

A screen is flat. The trick is to build a scene in 3D, then render it exactly as one viewer would see it if the screen were a window. Here is how we build an anamorphic billboard video, step by step.

1. Measure the real screen. Width and height in meters, height above the ground, the pixel map of every face, the angle of a corner or the radius of a curve. The scene is built at real scale, so a small error shows.
2. Find the viewpoint. The spot most people look from: the crossing, the escalator, the station exit, the café terrace. We ask for a photo or a short video from there, at eye height.
3. Rebuild the site in 3D. The screen and the building around it become a digital twin, at scale.
4. Put a virtual camera where the viewer stands. Same position, same height, aimed at the screen. This camera is the audience.
5. Build the scene behind the glass. The screen becomes the opening of a box: a room, a tank, a shelf, the inside of the building. The product lives in that box and moves toward the opening.
6. Project the render onto the screen. What the camera sees is mapped back onto the screen’s flat pixels. Seen head-on, the image on the screen is stretched and skewed. From the camera’s position, it looks straight. That deliberate distortion is the anamorphic part.
7. Check it from the viewpoint, then on the street. We preview the film inside the viewpoint photo, and test on the real screen when the media owner allows it.

The depth cues that sell the illusion

On a screen across a street, your two eyes see almost the same image, so they add little depth information. Your brain judges depth from other clues, and the content controls every one of them:

• Perspective. The lines of the box converge toward a vanishing point that matches the viewer’s eye.
• Shadows. The object casts shadows on the fake inner walls, which pins it in space.
• A frame. A border drawn inside the image gives the eye a “front” to measure against. On flat screens, the whole effect depends on it.
• Parallax. When objects move toward the viewer, near parts move faster than far parts, and the space becomes readable.
• Light. The scene is lit like the street at the hour people pass: same direction, same softness, real reflections on the product.
• Breaking the frame. When the object passes in front of the drawn frame, the brain places it in front of the screen. That is the second people film.

3D billboards from different angles: why there is one sweet spot

This is the honest part. The image is correct for one position. Move away from it and the geometry stops matching your eye.

From the side, the box seems to lean. Straight lines bend at the corner of the screen. The product that floated out now looks flat, or stretched like a reflection in a spoon. Writing about the Shinjuku cat, the trade site Sixteen:Nine noted that the illusion is “only really evident from a specific angle off the corner”. An industry adviser told the same site that nearly all the viral clips from China and South Korea are shot from one very specific angle, because that is where the effect works.

The sweet spot is a zone, not a point. It gets wider the further people stand from the screen, and it is narrowest on a hard 90-degree corner. Three rules follow:

• Choose the viewpoint where the most people stop, not the prettiest angle.
• Make the film work as a good 2D film from everywhere else. The brand and the message must read from any angle.
• Never judge a 3D concept from a front-on render. Judge it from the viewpoint photo.

Corner, flat and curved anamorphic screens

The shape of the screen decides how the illusion is built.

• Corner screens have two faces meeting at an angle, often called L-shaped. The two faces become two walls of a box inside the building, and the product leans out over the street. This is the strongest effect, and the rarest inventory.
• Flat screens need a frame drawn inside the image and a sense of depth behind it. The effect is softer, but it works on most premium screens you can book: portrait, landscape, facades, station panels.
• Curved screens behave like a soft corner. The 3D calico cat on the curved Cross Shinjuku Vision screen in Tokyo (2021) used one. So did WAVE, a crashing wave by the Korean studio d’strict on the giant LED screen that wraps the COEX Artium in Seoul (2020).

Our guide to corner, flat and curved screens compares the three formats in detail.

Is a 3D billboard a hologram?

No. There are no glasses, no holograms and no special 3D screen. An anamorphic billboard is an ordinary video file playing on an ordinary LED screen. Sixteen:Nine said the same about the Shinjuku cat: no hologram, no glasses-free 3D hardware, everything is in the creative.

So “3D hologram billboard” is a misnomer. The term sticks because the result looks like something floating in the air. If someone sells you a “hologram billboard”, ask what hardware is involved. An anamorphic billboard needs none, which is why media owners can sell the format on screens they already run.

Are 3D billboards real or fake?

Both exist, and they are easy to confuse.

The screen versions are real. The film plays on a real screen, and the people standing at the sweet spot see the effect live.

Many viral clips are something else: FOOH, or fake out of home. A CGI object is added to real street footage after the shoot, and nothing ever appeared in the street. That is a legitimate social format when it is presented as a film, and it is where KOSMO started. Our guide to what FOOH is explains the difference in detail.

The tell: on a real anamorphic billboard, everything stays inside the edges of the screen, however far it seems to lean. If the object touches the pavement, casts a shadow on passers-by or sits on a building with no screen, you are watching FOOH.

Where to see anamorphic billboards

Two of the most shared examples are WAVE in Seoul (2020) and the Shinjuku cat in Tokyo (2021). Both ran on giant LED screens that wrap around the corner of a building, and the clips that went around the world were shot from the angle the content was built for.

Today you find anamorphic digital billboards in most cities with premium screens. They work best where crowds stop: squares, crossings, mall atriums, station halls. Our guide to the best cities for 3D billboards lists the famous screens and what each city’s inventory is good for.

What makes an anamorphic billboard get filmed

Not every 3D billboard gets shared. Across the 150+ campaigns we have delivered in 14 countries, the ones that travel have five things in common:

1. A viewpoint where people already stop. A crossing with a red light, a queue, an escalator. Dwell time gives people the seconds to notice, then to get their phone out.
2. One moment. A single, simple break of the frame, readable without sound and without context.
3. The moment comes early. If the frame breaks at second 9 of a 10-second spot, most passers-by miss it. Put it early, and repeat it if the slot allows.
4. The product is the hero. What comes out of the screen should be the product or the brand, so the clip still carries the brand when it is shared.
5. A plan for social. The best angle is filmed on day one and posted by the brand.

What to check before booking an anamorphic screen

Before any creative, check five things:

• Viewpoint. Where does the crowd stand or walk? Can you get a photo from there, by day and by night?
• Dwell time. Do people pass in two seconds, or wait for two minutes?
• Geometry. Real dimensions, pixel map, corner angle or curve, gaps between panels.
• Share of loop. How long your spot lasts and how often it plays.
• Media-owner rules. File format, frame rate, length, sound, flashing content, approval and delivery deadline.

The screen brief checklist is the free list we send media owners. For each technical item, with typical values, read our guide to DOOH specs for 3D content.

How much does an anamorphic billboard cost?

There is no fixed price per anamorphic asset. The creative cost depends on the resizing, the number of screens and formats, and how complex the scene is. The projects we are built for usually land around €40,000. Adapting the same idea to more screens costs less per screen than the first one.

The media is a separate budget. We can buy it for you: you keep control of the budget, and the screens are chosen to fit the idea.

Production takes 3 to 4 weeks from the approved brief to delivery, with two rounds of changes included. The 3D billboard cost guide breaks the number down.

FAQ

What are anamorphic video ads?

Video ads rendered for one screen and one viewpoint, with the perspective distorted on purpose so they look three-dimensional from that spot. They are delivered as a normal video file, usually MP4, at the exact resolution of the screen.

Can an anamorphic billboard work on a flat screen?

Yes. On a flat screen, the illusion uses a frame drawn inside the image and a deep space behind it. The effect is softer than on a corner, but it runs on far more screens.

Can I reuse the same anamorphic video on another screen?

Not as it is. Each screen has its own size, shape and viewpoint, so each needs its own render. The idea, the 3D models and the animation carry over, which is why extra screens cost less.

Do anamorphic billboards have sound?

Rarely. Most digital out-of-home screens play without sound, so the moment must work in silence. On the Miele HydroClean plan, only one screen in France had speakers.

How long is an anamorphic billboard video?

As long as the media owner’s slot, looped. Many networks use 10-second spots; some use 6, 15 or 30 seconds. The length is fixed before production, because the whole animation is timed to it.

Have a screen in mind?

Tell us which screen, the dates and the product through contact. We tell you what that screen can take, what the illusion will look like from the street, and what it costs. Not ready to brief? Ask for a free concept for your screen and judge the idea from the real viewpoint first.