[ How it's built ]

No meshes, no assets — the entire image is one fragment shader. Each pixel fires a ray that gets bent by a simple 1/r² gravitational pull over 64 integration steps. Along the way the march checks three things: capture (the ray falls past the event horizon), crossings of the accretion disk plane, and crossings of a "code sheet" curtain that gets lensed into the hole.

// bend the ray, 64 steps per pixel
vec3 acc = -1.55 * p / (r2 * r);
v = normalize(v + acc * dt);

The disk rotates differentially — inner material orbits faster, Kepler-style — and the side rotating toward the viewer burns brighter (doppler beaming). The photon ring comes from tracking each ray's closest approach; captured rays leave the shadow pure black. The code glyphs are a monospace canvas texture, the only "texture" in the piece.

// keplerian differential rotation
float omega = 2.2 * pow(rd, -1.5); // inner material orbits faster

Welcome to the lab.

SHADERS & WEBGL — EXHIBIT ONE