Black Hole

Black Hole puts a ray-traced black hole in your scene: a black shadow ringed by a thin, bright photon ring, with a glowing accretion disk whose far side is bent up over the top and down under the bottom. Jets of plasma leave from the poles.

How it works

For every pixel, the path of light is traced through the hole's gravity step by step. Rays that pass close are bent around it, which is why you see the back of the disk above and below the shadow; rays that come too close are captured and stay black. The disk is hottest at its inner edge and cools outward, and it orbits faster near the centre. The side moving toward you is brighter and bluer, the receding side dimmer and redder, as in a real disk.

Settings

• Horizon Size and Disk Outer: the size of the shadow and how far the disk reaches.
• Tilt: the angle of the disk; nearly edge-on shows the lensed arch most clearly.
• Lensing: strength of the light bending. 1 is physical, 0 shows a flat, unbent disk.
• Beaming: how much brighter the approaching side gets.
• Color (the photon ring), Disk Color and Jet Color, with Jet Enabled to hide the jets.

Use it for

Space and science scenes, sci-fi titles, dramatic hero backgrounds. See also the Portal wormhole and the Lensing Grid.