This applet shows some animations of a spiral and/or a star drawn in real-time
with psychedelic backgrounds.

[For more technical information about the available parameters, click here.]

Most parameters are self-explanatory and you can always see brief description of each parameter by moving the mouse pointer over the wizard.

Basic Settings

There are 3 types of effects in this applet. Choose either Spiral, Star, or Both from the Type pull-down menu. Specify the applet Width, Height, and select Enable Textscroll if appropriate.

Background and Foreground Images

Set either Background Image or Background Color. If the BK image is smaller than the applet size, check Expand Back Image option. This will expand the image right across the applet area. If the BK image is smaller than the applet area, and Texture box is checked out, the image is tiled to cover the applet area. Optionally, you could set the Foreground Image, and Focus Image which is shown only when you mouse-over the applet area. We suggest you to use transparent gifs for these focus and foreground images.

Background FX

Other than a simple BK color or image, you could choose special BK effects. Tunnel, circle, huerot, kaleid, and plasma effects are available for your choice.

If your choice is Tunnel, configure the Color Palette, Tunnel Plot value (>0), horizontal and vertical tunnel movement at Move XY from [0, 20], and 6 Generator values. A value for each generator has to be in [1, 1000]. Note that the tunnel is based on a 512*512 image so when you make the applet width and/or height greater than 400, the routine will try to adjust them to the applet size so you can see approximations and black borders.

If your choice is Circle, configure the colors for the three circles, Circle Spacing, Circle Size, Circle Speed, and BK Color.

If your choice is Huerot, select the image for hue-rotation effect. The image size must be equal to or greater than the applet size. Huerot Speed value controls how fast hue shifts.

If your choice is Kaleid, select the image for the effect, and give the Kaleid Speed value. With kaleid effect enabled, both the applet and kaleid image should be squared.
If you use the kaleid as background effect remember to use images which are at least 145% of applet size (or set the applet size as 65% of kaleid image). Smaller images will make the applet lock.

If your choice is Plasma, set float values for First and Second Plasma Zoom Factors, and Rotation Angles. Then select Plasma Color.

Spiral

Define the initial XY Spiral Lap values, and give floating point values for XY increments. In the same manner, set the initial XY Rotation values, and XY increments. Precision value controls the spiral detail level, and the value must be in [0, 255]. Then, set Left, Right, Top and Bottom Inset values for the spiral. The internal area of the spiral is filled with Background Color, and the outline is colored in Foreground Color. When you mouse-over the applet area, Focus Background Color and Focus Foreground Color replace BKC and FGC respectively. If you don't want this shift to happen, do not select different colors for focus colors. Finally, you can draw over the spiral vertexes an image, specified in the Spiral Image box.

Star

The value for Branches is the initial number of branches of the star, while the values for Ratio and Ratio Increment are the initial and incremental growing ratios of the star. Then, set the star Background and Foreground Colors. Or, disable them. Give values to Left, Right, Top, and Bottom Insets boxes.

There are 4 Animation Types. Each number activate/deactivate the rest of the animation options. If your choice is No.3, you need to set the Number of Colors, and while selecting a particular Color Number in the color pull-down menu, select the color in the pallet right next to it. Star Gap value controls how many pixels may be used to draw every new color. If your choice is No. 4, only Color 1 is active.

Finally, there is the possibility to switch on/off the color cycling for the BG and FG using Cycle Background Color and Cycle Foreground Color check boxes. This option will affect both spiral and star.

Now, please go to the expert menu.