How do I make a levitating chair float convincingly?

The fix for chair-sized levitation is to stop thinking of the support as a stand and start thinking of it as a beam. Clear parts droop beacuse you're asking one long unsupported bar to hold everything at a distance. So shorten the distance. Put a 1x2 transparent brick or a couple stacked plates directly under the center of the seat, barely an inch tall, and build a dark tile or something in a matching color on the base right beneath it. From the side, any sliver of rod you can see just reads as shadow. The drooping you saw happened because your clear plates were bridging a span with nothing bracing them. Triangulate instead: two thin clear bars angled in from the base, meeting a single plate under the seat, forms a triangle that simply cannot flex the way a lone bar does. It takes up more footprint but it's rock solid and you can angle it back so it mostly hides behind the chair itself.

Since your scene is Magneto next to the chair, you've got an out most builders don't. Angle the whole chair slightly, like it just lifted off, and let the support lean back with it. A visible clear element under a tilted chair reads as 'he's holding it up with his mind' rather than 'this thing is propped up.' One trick that sells it hard: put a few 1x1 trans-blue round tiles on the base under the chair legs as a glow field. The eye accepts a support inside a glow effect way more easily than a bare rod, because the glow gives it a story.

If you'd rather not fight angles at all, the honest answer is the one-visible-side approach. Build the base with a recessed channel, sink the support into it, and display the scene pushed back against a wall or shelf so you only ever see it from the front and one side. Museum builds do this constantly. Nobody photographs a desk display from behind anyway.

And no glue needed for any of this. A single 1x2 plate sandwiched under the seat connects to the bracket with normal studs and comes apart clean, so your older parts stay untouched. The stacked round tiles under the feet just rest on the base, no connection at all.

Tried the triangulation trick on a floating speeder build last year and can confirm it holds. Two clear bars angled in from opposite corners of the base, meeting under a single plate, and it hasn't sagged a millimeter in over a year on the shelf. One extra thing that helped me: I used trans-light blue 1x1 round tiles under mine like you described, but I popped a cheap warm white LED strip behind the base and the whole glow field reads twice as strong at night. Cheap way to sell the hover effect without touching the parts at all. Only downside is dust settles on the tiles fast, so a soft brush pass every week or so keeps the glow crisp.

Been doing floaty builds since the days when our only option was a bent clear antenna piece and prayer, so here's my two cents. Before I learned the triangle trick I used to hang stuff from above. Suspend the chair on clear thread tied to a raised backdrop arm, and the eye never goes looking up, it just accepts it. Works great if your display sits in front of a wall or bookshelf anyway.

Only catch with thread is it sways if you bump the desk, so anchor the base with some weight inside. I keep a little bag of spare studs taped under my display bases for exactly that. Worth a shot if the bracket route keeps bugging you.

Total beginner here so excuse the dumb wording, but I tried something like this with a little rocket toy I wanted floating. What kind of worked for me was putting a picture of the base under a piece of clear plastic, so the shadow and the floor all looked the same from the front. It only really works if you look at it straight on though. Does the glow trick you all keep talking about need special see-through circles, or can I use whatever little flat bits I have lying around in a jar?

Update: tried the two angled clear bars meeting under the chair like the speeder builder suggested, and no drooping anymore, which is huge. Problem is from the right side you can still spot the second bar crossing the light. Does the trans-light blue tint actually help hide the supports, or is it more for effect? Might grab a couple.