The materials use calculation methods that are far from physically accurate models, but can nevertheless produce images resembling those obtained using accurate methods or astrophotography. The black hole materials are presented in the Surface and the Post Process domains (post process materials have the suffix "PP" in their names). Surface materials are simpler but do not allow falling into the black hole. Post Process materials are more complex, have more instructions, but allow falling into the black hole and can also blend with scene objects. Both types of the black hole materials compute distortions only for the flat accretion disk and for the specified background texture, therefore, for a realistic look, the scene objects should be relatively small compared to the black hole outer radius (that is, the radius of a sphere bounding distortions). As the background, you can use cubemaps or static textures of equirectangular projections. Dynamically updating cubemaps can imitate gravitational lensing distortions of scene objects but it yields realistic results only for objects remote from the player's camera, and the Scene Capture Cubes used for that purpose cost a lot of performance. Static cubemaps cost less instructions than equirectangular projections but the latter have better filtering methods when dealing with gravitational lensing distortions.

In UE5:

• TAA may provide better image quality and performance compared to TSR;

• DirectX 11 with SM5 provides better performance than DirectX 12 with SM6;

Demo and Docs

Demo Footage (extremely leisurely)

Quick Setup Guide

Credits:

• Earth and clouds textures used in the HDR background with the planet: Tom Patterson, www.shadedrelief.com

• Architectural textures: #cgbtextures