Behind the Scenes: Venom

My name is Aneesh Chandra.

I started learning 3D Animation and Motion Graphics during my time in school; I had a great interest in 3D animations and making video games.

Inspiration

I watched Venom in the theater and I love the Venom character most in the Marvel universe.

Sculpting

I started sculpting base forms in ZBrush. Then I sculpted the head and, around it, I sculpted Venom’s face with Dynamesh. Then I refined it more and more to get the result I wanted. In the final stage of sculpting, I sculpted the Venom slime separately on the face of the model and also on the mouth of Venom.

Retopology

Then I came to Blender to retopologize the whole mesh. In Blender, I modeled the teeth and the eyes. Then I UV unwrapped it to work on the textures.

Texturing

I textured the model with multiple applications like Substance Painter, ZBrush Polypaint, and Photoshop.

I painted the skin color map for the head in ZBrush Polypaint with projection mapping. For the displacement map, I made it with ZBrush. For the Venom skin, I used Substance Painter and Blender noise texture mixing.

Lighting

I had used an HDRI of a simple shop interior for ambient lighting.

I used mesh planes as light emitters.

Here is an image of the lighting setup:

Materials

For Venom’s skin, I used a shiny rubber-type material. I used a bit of subsurface scattering in the Venom skin material.

Compositing

For the background, I used Photoshop editing to include an image from a scene in Venom.

For post-production, I used some light passes to create good color contrast in the image. Then I used some color correction curves, a lens distortion effect, which is my favorite, and added some grains at the end.

Final Render

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About the Author

Aneesh Chandra, 3D Artist