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Gargantua, Black holes and Hawking Radiation

Easy, we have nothing to do with Hawking or Radiation. We will try to mimic black hole simulation we saw in the movie Interstellar. Now, actually there is no simulation, it's a simple, cheap trick, an illusion. But! After I reveal the trick, don't be ungrateful!!!




Those are what we will do, give it or take. It doesn't depend on any specific 3D software or render engine. Applicable in every 3D platform.


Now step by step :


1 - Throw a sphere at the center of the scene. The material is black, no reflections etc. Black hole afterall.


2 - Add a disc. Don't be fooled by image, make the disc even wider.



3 - Find a Spiral Galaxy texture from the internet. Make sure it is hi-res.



Watch out those; texture must be perfect square, galaxy is centered and its structure close to the circle not stretched or distorted in any direction and edges have enough black space just like the example above. Otherwise, black hole will wobble...


4 - Create a new material and connect the texture to the material's Diffuse, Self Illumination/Emission and Alpha/Opacity channels. You can disable Diffuse and use it on the remaining two channels. Apply the material to the disk we created. When we look from the top, we will get an image more or less like this:




5 - Increase the segments of the disk and add the Displacement Modifier. Make the disk slightly wavy detailed 3d. Displacement values ​​and maps are completely up to your taste. Just don't overdo it.


6 - Add a big sphere to the scene. Throw a star material on that. This will be our background. Adjust the tiling of texture so it is not stretched. When we render from the front slightly overhead, we will get a result similar to this:





I added bloom/glow as a post effect. The texture I'm using is not the one above, it's a yellow orange mixed galaxy texture. I made a copy of the disk and flipped it on the vertical axis. I left a little space between the two discs. Rotated one of the discs on its own axis so that there is no mirror effect. You can also use different textures on discs.

7 - Time for deathblow. How do we get the galaxy to tilt smoothly as it rotates on its axis, stretching over the sphere? Simple. Torus. Yes, Torus. Add a torus on the vertical axis to the scene. Make the settings visually as in the picture. Make inner radius slighly overlap with the black hole.




8 - Let's throw a fully reflective, mirror-like material to the Torus. We have 2 discs with small space between them remember. Let's add another one in between and make it extruded a bit. Remove the displacement and unnecessary segments of the disk. Keep the same texture. This one will will strengthen the glow. You can increase the thickness according to the situation.




This is the result. The system is ready, but it's not too fancy. After this point, you can do a lot as you wish. You can play with the dimensions of the discs, the illumination values, and use different circular organic textures outside the galaxy. For example, I added Falloff to the Opacity channel of the black hole material and messed around a bit with its settings (It will affect glow a lot!):





Finally, complete our animation by rotating our discs under a single group or separately on their own axes.



Note: Do not try to orbit around the black hole, which will cause weird effects. If you are going to orbit, make sure Torus will always face the camera. Finally, note that I used Bloom and Color Profile on the camera.


Stay safe.

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