Introduction: Geeky Desktop Wallpaper

This instructable is something I did a long time ago when I was in college to make my Windows 95 desktop look more cool than that of my friends.

Forgive me if the wallpaper is a measly 800 x 600 but I hope you are able to create your own HI Res ones after going through this.

You can see what the wallpaper effect looks like in the video below



The effect looks like as though signals are passing through the circuit of the motherboard in the wallapaper in tune with the songs playing in Winamp.

Materials
Winamp + Advanced visualization Studio vis plugin (installed by default)
The attached wallpaper (download the zip file)

This instructable is best understood by doing it yourself first only then will it be easier to understand what I am trying to do, later you can use your own images the way you want.

Step 1: Set Wallpaper

I could have used screenshots here but I think the procedure is simple enough.

The very first thing to do is to set the attached image as a wallpaper (800x600). It is very important you do not resize or dither or antialias or stretch the image in any way. On my old PC the desktop resolution was set to match the size of the wallpaper (800 x 600) but nowadays much higher resolutions have become the norm.

For the best effect you should set the desktop reolution to be the same as the wallpaper resolution or just tile/center the wallpaper. Once again do not stretch it.

Step 2: Prepare Winamp

Start winamp and select and start the AVS visualization plugin
Next right click in the plugin window and click Doc in AVS Editor -> Settings -> Display
Now select Overlay mode and click on "color" to select the overlay color

For the image I have attached here, select the overlay colour to be 545454 for RGB respectively.
Now you can undock from the AVS editor and minimize winamp, of course you need to be playing your favourite songs all the while.

Now you should be able to see the electrons whizing through the motherboard circuit tracks on your desktop.

Here is some analysis of what is going on...

The overlay mode of the plugin makes the selected overlay colour (RGB 545454) transparent, through which you can see the plugin's visual effects. The image that I have created is tinted bluish and the thin circuit tracks have been drawn using the above overlay colour. The colour was chosen so that the circuit tracks are almost invisible when the plugin is idle or winamp is not running. Also the tracks I have drawn follow the actual circuit tracks in the image to make it look realistic. Remember that if you stretch the image the RGB value of the circuit tracks changes and is no longer made transparent by the overlay mode of the plugin.

The RGB values have to be an EXACT match.

Another trick you can do with this effect is set the overlay colour to black then run the 3D Text Screensaver while a song is playing in Winamp. Hope you enjoyed this instructable,
now your songs not only sound good but look good as well.