“Star Soup” – Quartz Composer screen saver for Mac OS X

Sam Bauers — Fri, 30 May 2008 08:38:23 +0000

I’ve been sitting on this one for a few years. Mind you, for most of that time I thought I had lost it amongst my many backups and migrations from machine to machine.

This is a Quartz Composer… um… composition that I put together back when Quartz Composer was only new. Today I fired it up under Leopard’s newer shinier Quartz Composer and it still seems to work. I played with it for a minute or two and then added a couple of extra settings for people to play with.

Click “Read More” to see some screen-shots and videos showing what various tweaks to these settings can do.

Standard Soup

These are the default settings. Just a general swirling soup of psychedelic stars.

Changing Dot Color	On
Changing Randomly	On
Proximity	20
Spin	On
Tail Density	40
Scale	3
Rush	0
Looseness	0.5

Lonely Noodle

A lonely minimal star.

Changing Dot Color	Off
Changing Randomly	Off
Proximity	11
Spin	Off
Tail Density	1
Scale	10
Rush	0.025
Looseness	0

Neon Streamers

Long curly streams of neon light. Fluro colours, how fashionable.

Changing Dot Color	On
Changing Randomly	On
Proximity	0
Spin	Off
Tail Density	800
Scale	10
Rush	0
Looseness	0

Meteor Storm

Sitting in the eye of a meteor shower.

Changing Dot Color	On
Changing Randomly	Off
Proximity	40
Spin	On
Tail Density	400
Scale	5
Rush	0
Looseness	4

Eat your heart out Moire X

A new Moire for the naughties. Here’s one for the nostalgic.

Changing Dot Color	On
Changing Randomly	Off
Proximity	17
Spin	Off
Tail Density	200
Scale	0.5
Rush	0
Looseness	0

Floater

Ahem… not that sort of floater.

Changing Dot Color	On
Changing Randomly	Off
Proximity	10
Spin	Off
Tail Density	20
Scale	7
Rush	-0.025
Looseness	0.01

Disco Inferno

One of my favourites. A more intermittent pattern of waves reminiscent of an illuminated dance floor.

Changing Dot Color	On
Changing Randomly	On
Proximity	40
Spin	Off
Tail Density	200
Scale	0.5
Rush	0
Looseness	0

Slippery Slides

Mmmm, nice.

Changing Dot Color	On
Changing Randomly	On
Proximity	20
Spin	On
Tail Density	400
Scale	0.5
Rush	-0.25
Looseness	0

The file already!

StarSoup.qtz.zip – 30KB.

To edit the file you will need the Quartz Composer application which is part of Apple’s Developer Tools.

You can also run it as a screen saver. Just drop it into /Library/Screen Savers/. Then you can play with the settings in the System Preferences. “Star Soup” will appear in the screen savers area under “Other”.

Running Windows or Linux? No soup for you!

License

GNU Public License version 2 (GPLv2).

Let me know if you do anything interesting with it.

Enjoy the soup!

The Unlettered Gentleman » Quartz Composer