Spawn Statue | Kfir Merlaub Art

Hi everyone!

It has been a little while since I posted work here. And I would love to share my latest personal project:

“Spawn”
A digital statue inspired by the Spawn 1997 film.
Spawn’s appearance as performed by Michael Jai White (in costume)
Sculpted in Blender and Zbrush
Animated and rendered in Blender’s Cycles render engine.

I already posted here a Spawn clown thread using realtime GLSL, but now I wanted this Spawn to be pushed further.

This is the first time I try out Cycles in my designs and presentation. I want to push for realism in my works, or at least wait for Eevee to be ready.

A bit about the workflow here:
sculpting in blender initially to get the scene realized and reach an overall detail to the sculpt, as much as blender can handle currently without lag. Next moving into Zbrush seamlessly with GoB. for the final level of details. Afterwards, lowering the resolution to bake the textures. And then bringing it all back to Blender for lighting shading and animation.
I want to continue and elaborate on such a workflow in the upcoming works.

Would love to hear what you guys think!
Thank you!
Kfir




1 Like







Outstanding work, I’m not even a fan of Spawn but your work here is very impressive, awesome sculpting and presentation!

As always, fantastic work, Kfir.

That is awesome! Love the anatomy and the crazy details! also the video looks just great! really fantastic work
5 stars from me

Thanks so much guys!
And also I must thank Blender Guru and Gleb Alexandrov for their tutorials about cycles and lighting to get me up to speed with setting up the cycles render for this one. Really recommend their content.
Here is a video of me fiddling around with the file changing angles and lights. I didn’t change the settings on the video but Filmic Blender was used here for tone mapping.
I did create a special camera rig for my videos, first time in use. But still not finished. Hopefully in the next project it will be ready and I might share how and why it was created.

Wow it renders so quickly in your viewport, wish I wasn’t stuck with a laptop. How many polygons is it? Looks great btw.

Great work!!

Excellent work :cool:

Thanks guys! And much thanks for the Top Row!! :slight_smile: Very encouraged to continue with more works.
I made the render settings very limited - only 2 bounce lights in the light path settings. This is a reduced model of about 2 Million verts.
I sculpted in Blender until about 5 Million verts then moved to Zbrush for an increased resolution of about 50 Million, then reduced the model there, used very simple automated UVs from zbrush and imported it all to Blender. I think I will continue with this workflow and expand on it in the next projects.
Thanks!

Wow outstanding sculpt. One of the best Blender works I have seen in a while. Regarding your ZBrush workflow. How many polys does it have? Because lately I started this thread https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?424816-Blender-Sculpting-Viewport-vs-ZBrush-(not-what-you-expect)

In my experience at least with Multires Blender is faster than ZBrush in the viewport. Can you maybe tell me what kind of processor you are using?

Thanks! I read the thread you created, and I made these tests too. In my case, I don’t use the multires modifier. I try to deal with sculpting as much as I can and less with modeling and topology. I try to avoid and automate that as much as I can, so that my control on the artistic aspect will stay the primary focus.
In Blender if you subdivide a highres mesh, the lag will be unbearable you must have clean topology for that. Zbrush on the other hand does not require a neat topology in order to subdivide the mesh further. So without subdivision I find that Blender can be even more responsive than Zbrush “brute force”-wise, but if you want to reach a resolution of near 100 Million verts and not consider lag issues so much, zbrush performs better. I did hear from one developer that the Blender’s Multires modifier has some problems in its code and will be replaced. I heard that a couple of years ago so I dont know if it was, however the lack of performance in non “clean” meshes is still an issue for me.
And a small tip: I noticed that after playing with the scene of a very dense model in blender a lag is becoming evident. In order to refresh the scene I found that if I select all objects and either smooth or flatten the shading, the initial performance is restored.
Hope this helps! Thank you!

NIIIICE!!! :cool:

Automatic UVs might not be ideal, what I do is I make a high res sculpt in zbrush, decimate it in zbrush down to something that you can create uvs from. Import the low res model into blender, subdivide the low res mesh and the uvs using the subsurf modifier then I use shrinkwrap modifier on the high res subvided mesh to have it wrap around the high res sculpt.

You’ll get good uvs and it’ll be quick in the viewport since you can have it at the lowest setting in the viewport and render it at the highest subvision level. I’m not sure if there are better ways to render high res models in blender.

you should watch my tip :smiley: https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?425468-Denoising-button

Congratulations @kfir, great work.

that is really cool! was a big spawn fan back in my teen years when I was still buying them.

Hopefully the oft-rumored new spawn movie will happen. Given the recent success of R-rated movies, it seems more likely than it used to.

That’s great work. Thanks for sharing:D

Love all of your work, but even though it doesn’t seem possible you keep getting better and better at every aspect. Presentation is great and the sculpt work itself is so inspiring!!