Tried a little trick with texture maps, transparency, and primitive object. Attached is a sample of an animatable black hole. Texture and trans map on a cylinder primitive, remapped using UVMapper (great program). You can spin the cylinder and the black hole rotates, stars showing through in the background. Maps were made using the free Universe software (also excellent). Pretty easy..... Krel

Ooooo nice, that is excellent work Krel - and one hell of an innovative use of a primative Paul

Well, you know I am impressed!!! You always come up with the coolest things Krel!! Just AWSOME!!! ;-)

Are you going to post it in "free stuff"?

Wow, that looks very nice. I thought black holes absorbed all light and you couldn't see any stars through it. No matter, the texture is very good. Melanie

Three words: YOU DA MAN! That is awesome! Can I borrow your brain for a while! You come up with the coolest stuff!

heyas; well... the center should be black. or it could be a spiral galaxy deal. what'd be cool is if you use a magnet to form a plane into a funnel shape, and did this on it. ;)

Cool pic! What's this free universe package you refer to? Thanks Now all you need are the cast to that dorky Disney blackhole movie and you're set.

hey! maximillian wasn't dorky. he kicked butt. :)

VERY cool and innovative.

Thanks for the kind words everybody.....I'm still experimenting and will try to find a cone-shaped primitive to do this with; it would be more accurate. Yes, the center should be totally black, but the singularity in theory can be very small so it might not necessarily result in a totally opaque center....the magnet idea may be a great suggestion, just imagine a morphing black hole!!! When I get this perfected I will try to post.... As for the Universe program, the only info I have is an email address: starfleet2000@hotmail.com This person created it. It was free and I got it last year. It's about 430k and creates beautiful images of astronomical phenomena (black holes, star backgrounds, nebula, globular clusters, interstellar gas, stars with coronas, control over colors, etc.). If someone wants it I could email it but if a lot of people want it it might be better to post it. Unfortunately, I'm having ISP troubles (Earthlink recently aquired my provider). I'm not happy with them; they shut down my web site due to "excessive bandwidth useage"!!!?? My site is low traffic and has been up for four years with no problems......they suck so I'm going to dump them. Anyone wants to volunteer to host Universe let me know. BTW it is a free program per the author..... Krel