To update a wallpaper, simply open your project in the editor again. Go to Steam -> Publish and the button will say Publish Update, therefore no new wallpaper will be created and instead your old one will be updated.
Updating a Lost Project[]
If you deleted your project you can still overwrite it, but depending on the type of wallpaper you published, you may not be able to edit it anymore. Create a new wallpaper as usual and open its project directory with Edit -> Open in Explorer. Open the project.json file with a text editor, it will look something like this:
{
"description" : "Exemplary wallpaper to demonstrate new ember particle preset.",
"file" : "scene.json",
"general" :
{
"properties" :
{
"schemecolor" :
{
"order" : 0,
"text" : "ui_browse_properties_scheme_color",
"type" : "color",
"value" : "0.7647058823529411 0.3764705882352941 0.07450980392156863"
}
}
},
"preview" : "preview.jpg",
"tags" : [ "Relaxing" ],
"title" : "Campfire (1080p)",
"type" : "scene",
"visibility" : "private"
}
Add this line at the top right after {:
"workshopid" : "12345678",
So that it looks like:
{
"workshopid" : 12345678,
"description" : "Exemplary wallpaper to demonstrate new ember particle preset.",
"file" : "scene.json",
...
But replace the number 12345678 with the ID of your submission! You can find this ID in the URL of your existing upload:
Scenes Cannot be Taken from the Workshop and Updated Directly[]
You can create a new scene wallpaper and replace the one on Workshop like described above, this will deliver the updated wallpaper to all your subscribers.
If you must edit an existing scene project, Squee made this utility to unpack .pkg files for now, so you can use that: https://wetranslate.thiscould.work/scene.pkg/ scenes must be unpacked before editing.
OLD:
You cannot download a scene wallpaper from Workshop and edit it. Read below to understand why.
Wallpaper Engine compiles and packs all the various files you imported so that everyone who wants to actually use the wallpaper gets the best possible experience. This reduces load time and removes unnecessary bloat from the project, reducing the file size.
It is common for sophisticated 3D engines to do this and you will see that all of Valve's Workshops or the GMod Workshop are exactly the same. The same is true for Photoshop and After Effects. Imagine you would try to open an After Effects project from a rendered .mp4 file or a Photoshop project from a .jpeg, that simply isn't possible.
There are multiple levels of compilation and packing. The first level is relatively easy to step over and the community has made a tool for this here: https://github.com/redpfire/we This enables you to add more images, edit particles or move objects around. This does not enable you to edit existing textures or models because they are in a binary format that requires further de-compilation. The issue is that some information about the imported files is lost after compilation because it is unnecessary, like the original format.
An official de-compiler for all the various steps may be possible to integrate, but Wallpaper Engine is still about to get some hefty new features with custom formats including skeletal animations, puppet warp and key frame animations. Until the formats and function of these features are nailed down, it's not possible to integrate a full de-compiler since it would break every time some new feature like above is added and it may simply become impossible to sustain.