Planetoidal Life

Planetoidal Life is a space-themed audio-reactive scene in the Space category. Open it from the left visualizer list, start an audio source, and use the settings panel to shape its response.

Open Planetoidal Life

Launch the visualizer with its matching left-nav entry selected.

Interesting facts

Earth's own beginning was violent: a molten early world, an era of heavy asteroid bombardment, and, somewhere in that chaos, the first stirrings of life. BeamTracer's staged progression — molten core, drifting "creatures," a cratered aftermath — is a symbolic narrative built for sound, not a documentary timeline of actual events.

• Earth's first era earned a hellish name. Geologists call the period from about 4.5 to 3.8 billion years ago the Hadean, after the Greek underworld, because the young planet's surface was largely molten rock.
• The crust — and the oceans — cooled fast. Within a few million years the surface solidified enough for water vapor to condense and rain out, forming Earth's earliest oceans while the planet's interior stayed intensely hot.
• A bombardment scarred the inner solar system. Roughly 4 billion years ago, a spike in asteroid impacts is thought to have repeatedly melted, buried, and reworked Earth's surface, a period known as the Late Heavy Bombardment.
• The bombardment probably didn't sterilize Earth. NASA-funded modeling found no realistic scenario in which the impacts wiped out the whole planet, suggesting heat-tolerant microbial life could have persisted in refuges — or even used impact-driven hydrothermal heat to get started.
• Life's timing may track the oceans. Some researchers now argue life could have emerged around the same time Earth's oceans first appear in the geologic record, rather than waiting until after the bombardment fully subsided.

These details are summarized from NASA Astrobiology's "Did Hades Freeze Over?", NASA Science's "What is the Late Heavy Bombardment?", and NASA Astrobiology's coverage of microbial habitability during the bombardment.

Quick start

1. Start the demo track, choose a local audio file, or enable a live input.
2. Try a preset or style first, then open the section for the part of the image you want to change.
3. On a control with Assign modulation, open the source picker, choose a signal, and watch the slider's live fill.
4. Use Reset to Defaults whenever you want to return to the original look.

Presets and styles

Asteroids · Dna Helix · Genesis

Audio modulation

On a control with Assign modulation, select the activity icon to open Modulate with. Choose a named source, or choose — None to leave the control unmodulated. After you assign one, its name appears below the slider; select that name to edit the route, or use Clear modulation to remove it. The slider track shows the live signal reaching the control.

Settings reference

Glass Blur

Core

Material

Colors

Audio

Animation

Camera

Some controls appear only after you enable a related mode or style. The settings panel always reflects the options available for the current selection.

Tips for a better audio visualization

• Use bass for the largest orbital or camera motion and highs for stars, sparks, or glow accents.
• Try assigning Bass to Particles, then compare Mid, High, and Volume while the demo track plays. The slider's live fill shows the signal reaching that control.

Related guides

• Audio controls
• Audio modulation
• Presets
• Troubleshooting