# Wallpaper Engine Wallpaper Engine 2.1 - Inverse Kinematics Animations, User Texture Import & More

- Product: Wallpaper Engine (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/wallpaper-engine)
- Vendor: Wallpaper Engine
- Date: 2022-06-04
- Original notes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/431960/view/3219522887324586493
- Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/wallpaper-engine/releases/2022-06-04-wallpaper-engine-2.1-inverse-kinematics-animation

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- **added** — Inverse kinematics for puppet warp animations
- **added** — Support for user imported textures and videos in scenes
- **added** — Puppet warp reference pose system to make using character sheets easier
- **added** — Wuffs PNG decoder to improve scene loading speed
- **added** — Creator and collection highlight system to Discover tab
- **added** — Best of year queries for each year to Discover tab
- **added** — Animation loop wrap option to make looping puppet warp and property animations easier
- **added** — Different application wallpaper window detection with higher compatibility than previous hook based implementation
- **added** — Experimental support for different wallpapers per virtual desktop
- **added** — Named hitboxes to click events on puppet warp layers
- **added** — SceneScript function playSingleAnimation() to play a puppet warp animation once
- **added** — Animation ended callbacks to puppet warp animations
- **added** — Project cleaning dialog to delete unused assets from projects
- **added** — Swing and twirl effects with custom gizmos
- **added** — Perspective distortion to clouds, water ripple, water waves and reflection effects with custom gizmos
- **added** — More icons and colors for folders
- **changed** — Locked label width in browser to fix long labels moving other elements around
- **changed** — Aero peek unpause option to also affect unpausing of start menu
- **changed** — Improved text shaping performance for long texts on text layers that change every frame
- **changed** — Updated spin and perspective effects with custom gizmos

Hello everyone,

today we're introducing Wallpaper Engine 2.1 for Windows and Android with a wide range of new features, overall improvements and bug fixes. We will walk you through some of the most impactful new features in this update.

##### User Texture Imports

Another highly requested feature was the ability to allow for users to import their own images and even videos into existing wallpapers created with the Wallpaper Engine editor. These altered versions of a wallpaper can then also be shared on the Steam Workshop as so-called wallpaper presets. We are sure this will lead to a whole new series of popular and highly customizable wallpapers, so be on the look out for new and updated wallpapers with this feature!

_Credits for the sample video files go to (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2807194539) and (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2706567827)_.

To learn more about how to add customizable textures to your own wallpapers, be sure to check out our designer documentation:

##

- [Texture User Property - Wallpaper Engine Designer Documentation](https://docs.wallpaperengine.io/en/scene/userproperties/texture.html)

##### New Editor Gizmo for Perspective Effects

Previously, when you wanted to utilize certain perspective effects in the editor, the process was rather tedious and required manual number input. We have now released a new set of editor "gizmos" that you can use to change the perspective of certain effects more intuitively.

_Resizing the **Perspective** effect using the new perspective editor gizmo. Shout-out to (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2798072874)._

You will find the new gizmo when using the following effects with the **Perspective** option enabled (if applicable):

-  Perspective Effect

-  Cloud Effect

-  Water Ripple Effect

-  Water Waves Effect

-  Reflection Effect

##### New Editor Effects

In addition to the improvements to the perspective effects, we have also added two new effects to the editor with their own highly-customizable gizmo. These two effects can be utilized in a wide area of use-cases and make certain animations much easier to implement:

[table equalcells=1 noborder=1]

**[Swing Effect](https://docs.wallpaperengine.io/en/scene/effects/effect/swing.html)**
Swings an object back and forth.

**[Twirl Effect](https://docs.wallpaperengine.io/en/scene/effects/effect/twirl.html)**
Applies a configurable a spiral effect.

##### Inverse Kinematics Animations

With Wallpaper Engine 2.1, we are further improving on the puppet warp animation system in the wallpaper editor. One of the main new features are inverse kinematics animations. Inverse kinematics are an advanced functionality which allow you to create complex animations for limbs and joints of a character.

_Inverse kinematics animation in the Wallpaper Engine editor_

Alongside inverse kinematics, we have also added **blend rules** for bones. This allows you to attach a bone from one limb to another for example. Take the knight animation above, where the sword becomes attached to the hand once the knight pulls it out of the stone - this is one possible application of blend rules.

You can learn more about inverse kinematics and blend rules in the following two tutorials:

##

- [Limb Animations with Inverse Kinematics](https://docs.wallpaperengine.io/en/scene/puppet-warp/inversekinematics.html)

- [Blend Rules for Bones](https://docs.wallpaperengine.io/en/scene/puppet-warp/blendrules.html)

##### Discover Section Improvements

To make it even easier to find new wallpapers and content creators, we have overhauled some aspects of the **Discover** tab in the app. You will can now find new collection elements in the discover tab that allow you to find popular authors and wallpaper collections more easily.

We also added new "Best of 20XX" collections which allow you to easily find the most popular wallpapers of a given year - all the way back to 2016 when Wallpaper

_[Truncated at 4000 characters — full notes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/431960/view/3219522887324586493]_