Version 1.0

About

LavaLamp3D is a one-of-a-kind screen saver/desktop toy which actually simulates the physical behavior of a real lava lamp and renders it to your screen in real-time. The foundation of LavaLamp3D is its physics engine which simulates hundreds of particles inside a lava lamp and all the physical effects which makes them move in an unpredictable, fluid, and beautiful way. These include heat transfer, buoyancy, viscosity, Van der Walls forces, and surface tension.

The calculations from the physics engine are fed into a highly tuned graphics engine which draws the lava lamp in three dimensions, adds color and light, and allows the user to rotate, tilt, and move the lava lamp as if it were real. This is all topped off by a set of user-friendly controls which allow you to fully customize the colors, behaviors and other aspects of the lava lamp.

LavaLamp3D drew it's inspiration from the beauty of lava lamps, and is the result of four years of research and development, the use of sophisticated computer algorithms and hours observing and reading about lava lamps. The outcome is a virtual lava lamp that looks so real you won't believe your eyes.

Finally, LavaLamp3D is not only fun, but can be educational as well because by tweaking simulation setting you can gain insight into how the physics of the lava affect its appearance and behavior.

Controls

Icon	Action	Mouse	Keyboard	
	Brings up the help dialog.

	Click on the icon.

	‘F1’ key

	
	Before registration, brings up the registration dialog. After registration, brings up a dialog which shows the serial number.
	Click on the icon.

	‘B’ key

	
	Takes a snapshot of the screen, and saves the image as a bitmap to your desktop. Great for creating desktop wallpapers.
	Click on the icon.

	‘S’ key

	
	Brings up the configuration dialog which allows customization of the colors and behaviors of the lava lamp.

	Click on the icon.

	‘C’ key

	
	This icon is only available when running lava lamp in a window. Pressing this makes lava lamp expand to take up the full screen.
	Click on the icon.

	'F' key

	
	This icon is only available when running lava lamp in full-screen mode (not as a screen saver). Pressing this makes the lava lamp go back to running in a window.
	Click on the icon.

	'F' key

	
	Exits the screen saver.

	Click on the icon.

	‘Esc’ or ‘Space’ key

	

lavalamp3d.com

	Click on the lavalamp3d.com text in the lower left hand corner to get version information and a link to the LavaLamp3D site.
	Click on the icon.

	(None)

	
	Zooms or turns lamp. Fun hint: You can zoom until you are inside the lamp.

	Hold down left mouse button while moving mouse.	Ctrl + Arrow Keys

	
	Moves lamp up, down, left and right in the same plane as the screen.

	Hold down middle mouse button while moving mouse.	Alt + Arrow Keys

	
	Changes the angle from which you’re viewing the lamp. Allows you to look at the lamp from above, below and from the side.
	Hold down right mouse button while moving mouse.	Shift + Arrow Keys

	
(None)

	Make the lamp spin as if it were on a turn-table.

	Turn the scroll wheel up or down.

	Left or right arrow to spin. Down to Stop.
	
(None)

	Pause the lava lamp.

	(None)

	Pause Key

	
(None)

	Toggle particle mode on and off.

	Check box available in configuration panel.
	‘O’ Key

	
(None)

	Toggle polygon mode on and off.

	Check box available in configuration panel.
	‘P’ Key

	

Configuration Screen

*** Please feel free to experiment with the settings. It should be fun!!! If anything, you can always reset the settings back to the defaults by clicking the button labeled “Restore Defaults” ***

General
Control	Function	
Restore Defaults
	Resets all the settings to their defaults, including the position of the lamp.	
Show Particles

	LavaLamp3D looks so much like a real lava lamp because it simulating the behavior of the individual particles of lava. Normally, the particles are hidden, but checking this reveals them. 	
Show Polygons

	LavaLamp3D is created out of hundreds of thousands of triangles. Checking this option shows the outlines of the polygons for an old-school “Tron” look.	
Resume from last position on startup

	Normally, if you exit and re-start LavaLamp3D, it will restart from the last place it was when you exited. However, for a more genuine experience, you can make it start from an initial “cold” state every time by un-checking this.	
Slowly shift lamp left and right to prevent burn-in

	Burn-in is when a stationary image that is displayed for a long time on a screen gets permanently burnt onto the screen. Burn-in was a problem on older monitors, but is unlikely on most new CRT monitors and LCD screens. However, if you are using a display that is susceptible to burn in, turning this on will reduce the chance of that happening by slowly shifting the position of the lava lamp so that it isn't in one place for an extended period of time.	

Lava
Lava Color

	This slider controls the color of the lava inside the lamp. The colors are arranged like the colors of the rainbow – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, and back to red. If you want the colors to change continuously, the litter slider control to the right can be used to do that. This is what we call “Rainbow Mode”.	
Lava Saturation

	Saturation controls how vivid a color is. When this slider is all the way to the right, the color will be very bright, when it is in the middle, it will be more of a pastel color. When it is all the way on the left, it will be pure white, and moving the color slider will have no effect.	
Lava Brightness

	This controls the brightness of the lava. Note that if this is set all the way to the left, the lava will be black, and neither the Color or Saturation slider will have any effect.	
Lava changes color as it heats

	This feature gives you a way to visually see how hot the lava is by making it turn a different color when it gets hot. To do this, check this check-box, and then use the sliders below it to control the color of hot lava.	
Hot Color	These are similar to the lava color controls, except they only change the color of hot lava. So, if you wanted the lava to normally be blue, and turn red when it got hot, you could set the regular lava color to blue, and these setting to red. To use these, make sure “Lava changes color as it heats” is checked.	
Hot Saturation		
Hot Brightness

Liquid
Color	These controls affect the color of the liquid (the space that surrounds the lava). The functioning of these controls is very similar to those for lava color.	
Saturation		
Brightness		

Lamp
Color	These controls affect the color of the metal base and cap of the lava lamp. The functioning of these controls is very similar to those for lava color.	
Saturation		
Brightness		

Background
Color	These controls affect the background color of the lava lamp. Note that it may be bad for some screens to make this any color other than black. Please consult the manual for your screen or contact the manufacturer. The functioning of these controls is very similar to those for lava color.	
Saturation		
Brightness

	
Simulation
Frame Rate*

	Controls how many times per second the screen saver re-draws itself. If you make this too low, the animation may get choppy. If you make it to high, the screen saver may use up a lot of processor power. 25 is usually a good setting.	
Number of Particles*

	Controls how many particles are simulated. Moving this around adds and removes particles. This setting has a large effect on processor power used.	
Lava Render Quality*

	Controls how smooth the lava looks. Increasing this uses a lot of processor power, but makes the lava look nicer. Making this very low has a cool effect too. Try it and see!	
Lamp Heat

	Controls how hot the light that heats the lamp from the bottom is. Note that lava gets heated only when it sitting at the bottom of the lamp. If all the lava is stuck at the bottom, you might have the lamp heat too low. If all of it is at the top, you might have lamp heat too high.	
Time Step
	Controls how much time passes between each frame of the simulation. Increase this to make the lamp go crazy!	
Viscosity
	Controls how resistant the liquid is to the flow of lava. Lower this to make the lava travel faster. Increase to slow it down.	
Buoyancy

	Controls how badly warm lava wants to go up, and cold lava wants to go down. Lowering this will make the lava tend to float around the middle of the lamp. Increasing this will make it stay at the top and bottom.	
Surface Tension

	Controls how easily the lava breaks into smaller balls. Make this high, and the lava will form large spherical balls that won’t want to break apart. Make it low, and you will have little bubbles floating all over the place.	
Cooling Rate

	Controls how fast lava cools. This is the opposite of lamp heat. If it is high, all the lava will cool and fall to the bottom, and if it is low, all the lava will get hot and go to the top.	
Heat Diffusion	Controls how quickly heat spreads from cold lava to hot lava.	

Purchasing LavaLamp3D

LavaLamp3D is a shareware application. After ten days of use, the trial period will expire, and the lava lamp will go cold. If you would like to continue using lava lamp, and encourage the development of more cool software, please purchase it by clicking on the ‘$’ icon or pressing ‘B’ on the keyboard. If you already have a serial number, you will be able to enter it at that time.

If you choose to purchase LavaLamp3D, you will be presented with the eSellerate wizard which will show you the current price, and collect information necessary to complete the purchase. Finally, the wizard will give you a receipt that you will have an option of printing. You will also get a copy of the receipt via email. The receipt will contain a serial number that you will be able to use to re-activate LavaLamp3D if you ever re-install it. (We know the importance of privacy and hate spam as much as you do, so we will never share any information you provide us with third parties).

Note that we use third-party software provided by eSellerate (http://www.esellerate.net) to allow you to purchase LavaLamp3D directly from the screen saver. eSellerate was spawned off from MindVision software which has been around since 1987, and is used by hundreds of software companies including id Software (Makers of Quake, Doom, Wolfenstein, and Hexen) to sell their products. eSellerate uses industry standard encryption technology to secure your data, and is certified safe by Truste (http://www.truste.com).

LavaLamp3D History

As a child, Ilya, the creator of LavaLamp3D was always fascinated with lava lamps. His first memory of seeing a lava lamp was at a restaurant in Kiev, Ukraine, where the patrons sat at cozy little tables, each of which was inside a huge wine-cask. Lava lamps with yellow liquid and red lava provided the illumination. 

The experience must have had some subconscious effect, since in 2001, as a senior at college, he decided to make a lava lamp for his final project in computer graphics. Although some people thought it would be impossible to do, he and his good friend Julien came up with the idea of simulating the lava with particles and rendering a smooth surface over them. This is how the first 3d lava lamp, which was originally called "the blobulator" looked:

A few years later, Ilya was feeling bored and aimless, and decided to resurrect the lava lamp project. His artistically inclined and observant friend Miru pointed out all the ways in which LavaLamp3D didn’t look like real lava lamp. With that constructive criticism in mind, and the desire to turn LavaLamp3D into high-quality software, Ilya went to work. After many, many sleepless nights, he was able to come up with algorithms that allowed simulating not just five or ten but hundreds of particles, and gave the lava lamp a more conventional shape with better lighting. When the program was ready, his old elementary school friend Charles helped build a professional web site, and today, we hope you are enjoying the result of our efforts on your own desktop.

LavaLamp3D Future

Our plans for future releases are not finalized. Here are some of the things we hope to incorporate in future releases of LavaLamp3D:

•	More lava lamp shapes. (With the ability to create your own)
•	Popup help in the control panel.
•	The ability to save and load settings.
•	More user-friendly color-picking tools in the control panel.
•	Even more realistic graphics with reflection, refraction and shadows.
•	Even faster performance so we can simulate more particles.
•	Compatibility with Apple's OS, and maybe even Linux.
•	Any great suggestions from you.

Finally, we hope to apply the unique technology in LavaLamp3D to make other innovative products.

Acknowledgements

A big thank you to all the following people that made LavaLamp3D possible:

•	Jordan Russell and the Inno-Setup team for their excellent and freely available installer.
•	eSellerate for providing the registration software.
•	Charles Hui who helped create the web site.
•	Julien Beguin who I wrote the first lava lamp with.
•	Tom Funkhouser who taught the class for which I created the first lava lamp.
•	Miru Kim who helped me make lava lamp look more realistic.
•	Friends and family for their support.
•	All of my beta testers.
•	You, for downloading and trying our software.

Disclaimer

Although LavaLamp3D is called a screen saver, we use that term in the way it has come to be used in popular culture, not as something that necessarily protects the screen, but as cool graphical eye-candy. In reality, screen savers are not as necessary on modern CRT and LCD screens as they were on old ones because modern screens are designed to minimize the chance of damage by displaying a static picture. We added a feature called "Slowly shift lamp left and right" which will lower the chance of burn-in even further. Also, it may be "healthier" for your screen to use black as a background color, although this may not be true for all screens. Although burn-in on most modern screens is unlikely, the only way you can guarantee that your screen won’t suffer from burn-in, is to go to “Power Options” in the Windows “Control Panel” and set your screen to shut off after a period of inactivity. We do not take any responsibility for any damage caused to you or your computer as a result of using LavaLamp3D. Please see license agreement for more details.

Further Questions and Information

Your satisfaction is our #1 goal. If this help document did not address any of your questions, problems or concerns, please visit the LavaLamp3D web site (http://www.lavalamp3d.com) for more information. You can use the contact form on the site to send us questions, and we will try to reply promptly. Any ideas, suggestions, and comments are also greatly appreciated.

Copyright ©2004 Rosware, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Read license.txt for license information.