# Wallpaper Engine Wallpaper Engine 1.6 - Real-Time Lighting & Reflections, Screensavers, Mini Mode - Product: Wallpaper Engine (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/wallpaper-engine) - Vendor: Wallpaper Engine - Date: 2021-06-12 - Original notes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/431960/view/3058487332673524242 - Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/wallpaper-engine/releases/2021-06-12-wallpaper-engine-1.6-real-time-lighting-reflectio What's New is an index, not a publisher: every entry below links to the vendor's own release notes, which are the authoritative source. Entries are labelled where they are hand-curated sample data, pre-releases, or drawn from a secondary source such as a developer blog. Reuse: the summaries, labels and curation here are © What's New. Quote freely with attribution and a link back; wholesale republication of the corpus is not permitted — terms: https://whatsnew.fyi/terms. The vendors' own release notes remain their publishers'. --- - **added** — Add screensaver support with proper multi-screen support - **added** — Add real-time lighting and reflections for 2D scene wallpapers using physically based rendering - **added** — Add normal map generator for creating normal maps from images - **added** — Add foreground separation functionality to cut out characters or objects and dynamically fill the space behind them - **added** — Add character sheet creation functionality to cut characters into pieces for puppet warp animation - **added** — Add mini mode for Wallpaper Engine window accessible via double-arrow button or F10 key - **added** — Add intro wallpaper functionality for playlists to play the first wallpaper only once at startup - **added** — Add color options to all web type wallpapers - **added** — Add back and forward folder navigation to browser and editor with system backward and forward buttons - **changed** — Persist playlist states through restarts - **removed** — Remove browse window opacity slider Hey everyone, **Wallpaper Engine 1.6** adds a couple of cool features for users and wallpaper creators alike. Wallpaper Engine now allows you to use your wallpapers as screensavers, introduces real-time lighting and reflections on 2D images, comes with a brand new mini mode and allows you to set a wallpaper that plays only once as an intro wallpaper when you start your computer. ##### Real-time Lighting and Reflections Wallpaper Engine 1.6 introduces real-time lighting and reflections to 2D scene wallpapers which can have a major impact on the visual quality of wallpapers and can really bring images to life. The underlying technology relies on **physically based rendering (PBR)** to make this feature as performance-friendly and easy to use as possible. The lights are rendered in real-time and can also dynamically move around the wallpaper. See the following example where we have attached a light source to the mouse pointer: All of this also comes with a brand **new normal map generator** that we created so that anyone could create normal maps for their images with relative ease. Normal maps are commonly found in video games and allow flat surfaces (such as 2D images that most people use in Wallpaper Engine) to be perceived as if they are 3D. If you want to learn how to utilize these features for your own wallpapers, be sure to check out our designer documentation. We have created a couple of guides on lighting and reflection which you can use to get started with your own ideas: - [Real-time Lighting & Reflections](https://docs.wallpaperengine.io/scene/lighting/introduction.html) ##### Foreground Separation Another cool feature we added is a new functionality that we call **foreground separation**. It allows you to cut out a character or object from the foreground of your image and then dynamically fill the space behind it. This makes animating characters much easier as it makes them their own separate layer so that you will not have to worry about character effects and animations having an unintended effect on your background image. See the following slideshow that shows the original image and the separated images that we created from it (filled-in background and foreground character): If you would like to make use of foreground separation for your own wallpapers, you can learn more about how to use it on our designer documentation website here: - [Foreground Separation](https://docs.wallpaperengine.io/scene/image-preparation/foreground-separation.html) ##### Character Sheet Creation You can also take this one step further and use our new **character sheet creation** functionality which allows you to cut your character into different pieces that you can then use for a very clean **puppet warp animation**. If you are interested in learning more about this, we have also prepared a tutorial for that here: - [Character Sheet Creation](https://docs.wallpaperengine.io/scene/image-preparation/character-sheet.html) ##### Screensavers Wallpaper Engine 1.6 introduces a new way to use your wallpapers: You can now configure them as a Windows screensaver with proper multi-screen support. You can either choose your screensaver to be exactly the same as your actively running wallpapers or configure a completely new setup just for your screensavers. You will now find that the **Installed** tab comes with two sub-menus, one for configuring wallpapers and one for configuring your screensaver. Once you click on the screensaver option, you will be asked to install the Wallpaper Engine screensaver module, which you can then enable as your current screensaver in Windows. For more infos, see our help page here: - [Screensavers with Wallpaper Engine](https://help.wallpaperengine.io/functionality/screensaver.html) ##### Mini Mode Previously, Wallpaper Engine had an opacity slider at the bottom of the window that you could use to lower the opacity of the window. Initially we thought this would be a good way to help users to con _[Truncated at 4000 characters — full notes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/431960/view/3058487332673524242]_