“Building Interstellar’s Black Hole: The Gravitational Renderer” by James, Dieckmann, Pabst, Roberts and Thorne
Conference:
Type(s):
Entry Number: 21
Title:
- Building Interstellar’s Black Hole: The Gravitational Renderer
Session/Category Title: Off the Beaten Path (Tracing)
Presenter(s)/Author(s):
Abstract:
Interstellar is the first feature film to attempt depicting a black hole as it would actually be seen by somebody nearby. A close collaboration between the production’s Scientific Advisor and the Visual Effects team led to the development of a new renderer, DNGR (Double Negative Gravitational Renderer) which uses novel techniques for rendering in curved space-time. Following the completion of the movie, the code was adapted for scientific research, leading to new insights into gravitational lensing.
References:
James, O., von Tunzelmann, E., Franklin, P., and Thorne, K. S. 2015. Gravitational lensing by spinning black holes in astrophysics, and in the movie Interstellar. Classical and Quantum Gravity 32, 6, 065001.Google ScholarCross Ref
James, O., von Tunzelmann, E., Franklin, P., and Thorne, K. S. 2015. Visualizing Interstellar’s wormhole. Am. J. Phys., in press.
