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Black Hole

This small project is a "recreation" of a black hole and is a tribute to cosmologist Stephen Hawking, born on this day (8th of January) in 1942. While the map itself is almost completely empty, it has a slight curvature from the edges to the center. This should give you the impression that you're standing on a spherical object with a very large radius and, along with the custom theme and cubemap, should make the map look like a black hole, or at least part of it. Another purpose of the curvature is to show a bigger part of the accretion disk visible in the cubemap, which would be a bit more hidden if the map was completely flat.

As you can see from the screenshots, if you open the resource panel there is a little surprise. I overlayed on the map a picture of Hawking himself as a reference, and used the oil brush to paint it. I've always been bad at drawing and this is the first time I actually try to draw someone's face, but I wanted to try resource "painting", so I hope the result is not too ugly lol
This was made a lot easier thanks to the Resource Panel + Move It trick that allows you to keep the resource view also when painting them. I think I first heard about this trick from Sidai, so big thanks to him. If that wasn't him then shoutout to Sidai anyways because why not.

If you're not into black holes, you can rotate this map 90° clockwise and it becomes a recreation of Kazimir Malevič's Black Square[en.wikipedia.org].

Bonus song for this map: Travellers by ISON
Bonus song for the Kazimir Malevič Version: KMF by 65DaysOfStatic



The start square is located at the highest point of the map and has highway and rail connections and two water ponds for fresh water and sewage, just in case you want to build on this map. There is also a plane route near the edge of the map.

In the one click collection above you'll find all the required/suggested mods. Please read the Black Hole Cubemap's page, there you can find some useful instructions and the suggested visual settings for this map.

Most LUTs will work ok with this map, the biggest difference between them is how the cubemap appears. For example, the vanilla European or Tropical LUTs will give the sky a warmer look and will make the red of the accretion disk pop more, while the vanilla Faded or Dark LUTs will make the sky slightly blue. If you want space to look darker I suggest Owl's 70s Vintage, Oceanic LUT V1 or San Minato LUT V1.3.