Ethereal - Live Wallpaper Engine

"Touch the Void."

A programmable artwork that renders a living, breathing ethereal world directly on your Android home screen.

📱 Overview

Ethereal is a high-performance Android Live Wallpaper application built entirely with Kotlin and native Android Canvas API.

Unlike typical video-loop wallpapers, Ethereal renders every frame in real-time, simulating fluid dynamics for fog, particle physics for light, and multi-layer parallax for depth. It transforms the static home screen into an immersive "DailySync" experience—calm, intelligent, and reactive.

✨ Key Features

1. Multi-Layer Parallax Depth

Implemented a custom parallax engine that moves layers at different velocities relative to the scroll offset, creating a genuine 3D illusion.

• Background (Sky): Moves at 30% speed (Factor 0.3) for stability.

• Midground (Fog): Moves at 50% speed (Factor 0.5) with seamless wrap-around logic.

• Foreground (Particles): Moves at 120% speed (Factor 1.2), creating a dynamic "pop-out" effect.

2. Physics-Based Interaction

The fog isn't just an animation; it's a simulation.

• Fluid Repulsion: Fog particles react to touch input, gently parting ways based on vector calculations.

• Inertia & Damping: Objects carry velocity and slow down naturally due to simulated air resistance (damping factor 0.92).

3. Reactive Particle System

• Touch Ignition: Spawns bursts of light particles exactly at the touch coordinates (corrected for parallax shift).

• Dynamic Pooling: Manages a pool of 2,000+ particles efficiently, ensuring zero frame drops even during intense interaction.

🛠 Technical Highlights

• Pure Canvas Rendering: No heavy game engines (Unity/Unreal) or OpenGL dependencies. Lightweight and battery-efficient.

• Memory Optimization: Uses a single Bitmap for the background and recycles objects to prevent Garbage Collection (GC) pauses.

• Mathematical Precision: - Custom coordinate transformation logic to map screen touch points to the parallax-shifted world.

  • Canvas.scale and translate optimization to prevent background clipping on wide scrolls.

📂 Architecture

The project follows a clean separation of concerns, ensuring maintainability and scalability.

com.gadgeski.ethereal
├── EtherealWallpaperService.kt  # Entry Point (Service)
└── renderer/
    ├── EtherealRenderer.kt      # Main Render Loop & State Manager
    ├── SkySystem.kt             # Background Layer (Bitmap & Parallax)
    ├── FogSystem.kt             # Physics Layer (Repulsion Logic)
    └── ParticleSystem.kt        # Foreground Layer (Pooling & Ignition)

🚀 Getting Started

1. Clone the repository.

   git clone [https://github.com/gadgeski/Ethereal.git](https://github.com/gadgeski/Ethereal.git)
   

2. Open in Android Studio.

3. Build and Run on a physical device (Emulators may not support Live Wallpapers fully).

4. Select "Ethereal" from the Wallpaper picker.

🎨 Design Philosophy

• Mode: DailySync (Lifestyle/Cafe)

• Palette: Deep Purple, Sunset Orange, Cyan & White Glitch accents.

• Concept: A window to a digital ether that bridges the gap between the organic and the synthetic.

Designed & Engineered by Gemini customized with Gem.