Something for the weekend - Part 131 - Is there life on Mars?

[davescm]

Hi

With the Perseverance Rover succesfully landing on Mars and setting off in search of life signs, I thought we might have our own bit of Mars based fun. So to that end, I've created my version of a Mars like surface. Can you now show us what life we might find there?

The “rules”:

* Anything goes, as long as it meets the forum rules on decency, copyright etc

* Anyone, and everyone, is welcome to have a go, whether you are a complete beginner or a Photoshop expert.

* There are no prizes apart from the chance to practice, show off, or bring a bit of humour and fun. Don't be shy, join in and have a go!

To download the image below at 3842 x 1840 pixels, with an embedded ICC colour profile (sRGB), hover over the image and click on the circle with the arrows at the top right. Then, when the image opens in its own window, right click and choose “Save Image As/Save Target As” (or similar depending on your browser).

When posting back your image – please use the Blue reply button in this first post. If posting a comment on someone else’s entry then please use the grey reply button next to their image post.

Have fun.

Dave

[Dean_Utian]

Isn't water the sign of life. Here's Mars after a good rain 🙂

[Jacob Bugge]

Now that is a good sign, Dean, pure pleasure.

Or a bad sign for anyone arriving without watertight eqipment; and a boat of course.

[davescm]

I hope they remembered to pack the fishing tackle 🙂

Dave

[jane-e]

"Let the Wild Rumpus Start!"

— Maurice Sendak

~ Jane

[Ussnorway]

look they are having the human over for dinner tonight 😉

[jane-e]

---

@Ussnorway wrote:

look they are having the human over for dinner tonight 😉

---

They do discuss that in the book, Graham!

When Max gives up being king of the wild things, they respond with, “Oh please don’t go. We’ll eat you up — we love you so!” Max tells them, “No!” and finds his own supper is waiting for him when he gets home.

“And it was still hot.”

~ Jane

[chanaart]

[davescm]

Those Martians look friendly Chana

Dave

[jane-e]

Uncle Martin and his spaceship from My Favorite Martian

~ Jane 

[Trevor.Dennis]

Didn't they have to cancel the show after Martin moved back to Mars?  Apparently, they assumed he was using hippy speak when he kept saying 'This is heavy dude.' but evetually realized he was referring to Earth's three times stronger gravity.  

[jane-e]

Well, here he is — back on his home planet, so it looks like you're right, Trevor!

~ Jane

[davescm]

He's been there a while now though hasn't he? 🙂

Dave

[jane-e]

It depends on your perspective, @davescm. According to Wikipedia he was 450 years old a half a century ago ! 😊

~ Jane

[Jacob Bugge]

Click/RightClick to get closer, or Click Here to see in Chrome 

[davescm]

So Star Wars was not set in a distant galaxy after all

Dave

[davescm]

Is it life on Mars or just the dust that mimics us?

Dave

[Ussnorway]

we are all just star dust mate

[Trevor.Dennis]

Wow.  How did you do that Dave?   It looks like After Effects!

[davescm]

"How did you do that Dave? It looks like After Effects!"

I was playing around with Blender's new geometry nodes (in version 2.92), using them to put particles on the vertices of a model head, and then moving their position through time. Their position was also linked to the position of the passing sphere as it moved across the "face".

Although I used Blender, it could be done in any 3D application that allows you to keyframe a particle system.

Dave

[davescm]

For any Blender users, this is the node set up for the head :

Dave

[F.Quill]

Impressive!  

[jane-e]

Super fun!

Which comes first, Dave, the head expoding into dust or the dust forming into a head? 😊

~ Jane

[davescm]

Jane - The more I think about that , the more my head turns to dust 🙂

Dave

[Trevor.Dennis]

Thanks Dave, but I can't see myself ever getting that deep into Blender even if it can do stuff like that.  One thing I liked was how smooth the GIF is.  I've downloaded the GIF now and can see it has 125 frames, but that sstill not seem excessive and it really is smooth for a frame animation.

I keep thinking about using video for SFTW uploads, and maybe using Animate or After Effects.  I actually think Animate would be easier when you have multiple objects moving independantly.  In fact I am sure of it.

[davescm]

I've tried embedding video in a forum reply before Trevor. The problem I found was that it only played once (no looping) and no matter what embedded code I used, after it played once it stepped on and there was someone else's video showing in my post. That was using YouTube and the same codes I've used to embed video in my portfolio so the problem appeared to be the way the forum handled the code.

So it was back to GIF.  I didn't do anything special with the GIF. I just exported a frame sequence of 125 pngs from Blender , imported those frames into Photoshop and used Save for Web to make the GIF, adjusting the options to strike a balance between quality and filesize.

Dave.