How to Create Animated Wallpapers (GIF) or DreamScenes

Windows DreamScene is a utility that came with Windows Vista that allowed videos and animations to be used as desktop wallpapers. Technically, you can use any video as a ‘DreamScene’ but proper DreamScenes are short videos, usually a video loop, having simple animations and optimized in dimension for the desktop. You can also use animated GIFs as wallpaper, for which no Windows Vista or Windows 7 or DreamScene is required.

Animated wallpapers and DreamScenes can be downloaded from various sources on the web, but we are interested in creating our own.

To create an animated wallpaper we will use the software DP Animation Maker. Here is the publisher’s description:

DP Animation Maker is powerful, easy-to-use animation software that lets you create animated backgrounds, animated gifs for websites, and other content within minutes. A unique toolset with a wide range of animations allows you to turn almost every picture into a professional-looking video.

It is not possible to animate existing objects in an image, but we can add new objects to it and animate them. The ‘unique toolset’ that the author mentions above is a collection of such animated objects. By adding swaying grass, falling leaves, rain, lightning, fog, bubbles and other effects you can turn a dull and boring wallpaper into something lively and animated. And the effects are very convincing.

Watch this video demo I created.

Aside from weather and atmospheric effects, there are different types of flower plants, at least 7 different types of colorful, tropical and aquarium grade-fishes, and two different ghosts thrown in for good measure. You can also import your own animation in the GIF format

Each object and effect can be scaled, edited and manipulated to fit into the scene. You can change the colors of the grass and leaves, the direction of rain drops, the intensity of the animation, the number of objects in the animation etc. Often several variations of the same object or effect are available.

Animations can be saved as GIF or AVI or as self playing EXE files. I suggest you to choose AVI; GIF is is only suitable for small animation. When you save an animation you have to enter the width and height and the animation will be scaled down or up to fit the entered dimension. You have to specify the length of the video and the frames per second too. Keep the length short and crank up the FPS to at least 25 to get stutter free animation.

DP Animation Maker is a free and a fantastic tool to create simple animated wallpapers, ecards, and website backgrounds.

Related: 4 free tools to create Animated PNG (APNG)