Artist Explains How Minnie's Haberdashery From Tarantino's The Hateful Eight Was Made in 3D

Introduction

Hello! My name is Sohyun Yang, and I study 3D environment art. I've always been interested in game art, and when I played Bioshock Infinite, which was the first video game I ever played, I was very shocked by the beauty of its environments. Surely, the game was very fun too, but its locations simply fascinated me. Thus, I decided to get into 3D environment art, starting out by creating low-poly graphics and having a few short casual game projects.

Minnie's Haberdashery

Initially, I didn't want to create a movie scene. It's hard to gather enough material from a movie because the background changes so many times, and the background is not the main focus, so at first, I thought about creating a real-world location.

But when I researched various places, I realized that while they were beautiful, they didn't appeal to me. I wanted this project to feel unique, not just pretty. Then I started rewatching some of my favorite Quentin Tarantino movies, and while watching The Hateful Eight, I realized that throughout the entire movie, the setting is confined to a single room – Minnie's Haberdashery.

There was enough scene to give me a reference for the project, and the space was very appealing to me. I love spaces that are beautiful or colorful, but what I truly love is the cozy, lived-in feel of old wood and cloth, or spaces from a bygone era, like the 18th-19th century. Because that kind of thing has a lot of stories to tell. So I thought Minnie's Haberdashery could be a perfect scene for me.

Gathering References

With the exception of The Hateful Eight, I used a lot of fragmentary images. I used images of old country houses, hunting cabins, and haberdasheries. I also took a look at Red Dead Redemption 2 to see how the feel of the Wild West was captured in the actual game. I used PureRef to lay out the movie scene and placed relevant images in it. For the small decorative props I used, I created separate canvases and separated them by type.

Blockout

First of all, I created a 300cm x 300cm wall and floor module to lay out the walls and floors, and then modeled large objects as simple polygons to place them. I created furniture that checked the heights of the actors in the movie and roughly calculated the heights and widths of the furniture based on that. And I adjusted it to balance with the wall.

The second thing I did was create and place textures for the walls and floor. I've always been interested in Substance 3D Designer, so I used it to create the walls and floor.

As you can see above, the floor planks are much larger than they are now. Initially, I was working with the proportions of the movie, but as the project progressed, I wanted the planks to be more in proportion with the furniture, so I reduced the size of the planks and I laid out a rough lighting design.

I changed the lighting a lot as I cleaned it up for the final render, but I had the overall mood and most importantly the location of the lights, so I was able to create the project while maintaining the mood.

Modular Assets

I created a tile as a 300cm x 300cm base and then created the additional things I needed. The assets on the second floor, which are hard to see, were recycled from what I had made as much as possible. Although this is a small interior project, modularization is essential for efficient asset management.

Composition

Initially, I was very conflicted about whether or not to add a violent ambiance to this project. I couldn't make up my mind, but I just kept working on it. When I was about 2/3 of the way done, the setting was still peaceful. 

Sweet Dave's chair is built from the ground up to have blood on it because it was such an important part of the movie, but the bed was initially built on a pre-incident bloodless version.

However, as I was filling in the shelves behind the bed, I realized that the shelves with the clutter were very distracting and I wanted to create a focal point, so I heavily modified the bed’s existing modeling and textures by adding bloodstains to make them more eye-catching when viewed. I wanted people who didn't know the movie to say, "What happened here?" and people who had seen the movie to say, "Oh, that happened here in the movie!"

In the movie, this table didn't have a particular story. But I wanted to make it more fun and engaging than a straight recreation of the movie, so I turned it into a card game table in a bar like you'd see in a Western movie. I laid out the poker chips and cards, and to make it a little more interesting, I added a gun and bottle of liquor, and cups. But I wanted to tell more of a story, so I scattered the cards, broke the chairs, and knocked them over. 

The blood wasn't just spattered on the floor either, but cards and poker chips were placed on it and soaked in blood to make it more interesting. When you look at the space with the table as a whole, it looks like a fight happened here, making the viewer wonder what has happened.

I changed the kitchen a lot from the original. By the time I was halfway through creating and placing the large pieces of furniture in the original kitchen, it was clear to me that I needed to change that part to make it feel more like a game, and as I kept watching the movie, I kept thinking, "I guess it's a kitchen, but it doesn't really feel like a kitchen," so I decided to add an oven.

At first, I thought of a small oven, but then I realized that in order to make this space inviting, with the mint-colored table in the center, I needed a large object to go in and support the back of it, so I built and placed a giant oven that took up an entire wall.

Also, the kitchen window wasn't an important part in the original. However, when the window was created and placed, the light coming in and the outside peeking through was very attractive, so I wanted to take advantage of that. I also thought, "There MUST be a PIE in front of the kitchen window!" so I took the pie data from Megascans and placed it there.

Also, the mint-colored table, which would be the centerpiece of the kitchen, was an unattractive and difficult part to create if it were to be based on the original movie. The half-plucked chicken would have been time-consuming to make and I wasn't sure I could make it appealing enough, so I thought of other props that would fit in the kitchen and created them. I placed a large tin bowl with corn, potatoes, and other crops to give it a rural kitchen feel, and I also hung a cloth over the basket to make it feel more cozy. After creating and arranging the props, I was able to create a space that felt like a kitchen.

In front of the fireplace, which is the centerpiece of this setting, I added several things. I wanted to tie the two chairs and the chess table together, so I placed a carpet. And I wanted to add a little scary feeling, so I added a taxidermied deer.

It could be easier to just transfer the scene to 3D and not have to think about composition and placement, but I wanted to recreate the background in my own way. I wanted to make it more interesting for the viewer by adding elements to the background and telling the story of the movie, and I wanted to make it more beautiful.

Forming an Idea

To create a beautiful composition, I took several shots from different angles when a large piece of furniture was placed, and put them into my iPad. In my spare time, I would look at reference images, jot down ideas, and think about what kind of things would be good for my project.

Every couple of weeks, I took a mid-course shot and looked at it with the reference images I'd been saving to see what could be good. Whether you use the idea or not, jotting down ideas is helpful to organize your thinking. 

Tools

• 3ds Max: Modeling
• Substance 3D Designer: Textures and alphas
• Substance 3D Painter: Texturing
• Marvelous Designer: Cloth
• ZBrush: Sculpting
• Unreal Engine 5: Rendering
• Photoshop: Adjustments and alphas
• PureRef: Reference
• TopoGun 3: Low-poly mesh
• RizomUV: Unwrapping UVs

Texturing

The wood texture is the one thing I worked on the most during this project. Different base materials were created for each type of wood. Usually, I used the scanned tile data and adjusted it. I’ve used about six different base wood materials multiple times for this project.

For the guitars, I didn't reference an image of clean new guitars, but rather images of old, dirty guitars. I looked at images of old guitars and noted what parts had changed. I drew worn areas on the body to depict the story of how the guitar was used and how old it was. 

For the snowshoes, I made a quad polygon and an Opacity mask for the center laces to make them efficient.

It may look less sharp and appear flat, but it's a small object, so it's good enough.

Cloth

The wool cloth is used multiple times. Instead of creating all the patterns by hand, I created three different types of knit bases from Substance 3D Designer and then made color masks from the images to quickly create multiple designs.

After creating the knit pattern, getting the mask from the image, and using the Color to Mask node, I got the right mask of area for each color. But it could not be perfect, so I used the SVG node to fill the empty area. So I got an almost perfect knit pattern, I randomly changed the color of the knit and added unraveled threads to make it look more natural and used. Using this method, I made wool fabric in several different patterns.

The larger cloth was tiled to maintain its materiality. I created a basic cloth texture and tiled it, adding Normal texture and dirt & blood mask to add detail. To help manage the data efficiently, the striped cloth that is used multiple times was created using a plain cloth texture and a stripe mask, rather than multiple striped color textures.

The blanket was created by blending two materials with an RGB channel Mask texture that combines three grayscale images to represent the fraying of the fabric. I also employed vertex painting to use only the portion of the mask that I need.

Decoration Props

Because it's a haberdashery, so many things needed to be placed. To save time, I used assets and materials multiple times.

The guitar was created from one mesh with minor changes, and the cloth is made from the same base Substance 3D Designer material multiple times. For the lamps, boxes, and cans that needed to be placed in multiple locations, I created variant types of materials from the same mesh.

The small box was made with 4 different types of textures and the basket with 3 different types of textures. Cans were made with 5 different types of texture. For the corn, I utilized the base mesh to create different varieties. I made some with kernels and some without, some with leaves and some without so that they could be highly utilized and placed naturally.

And I used purchased assets or utilized Megascans data. I’ve purchased some assets from the UE Marketplace. I wanted to give the walls a natural aged look, so I purchased a cobweb pack. I also needed a lot of general goods, so I used some of dekogon's assets because it worked well with my project.

Lighting

I owe a lot of help with the lighting to my mentor, Sangwook Lee. He is such a good mentor who gave me a lot of help and advice in deciding what I have to do with the project and that gave me a lot of help to move forward with the project. And he showed me what kind of lighting is realistic and beautiful.

Initially, I placed lights based on the movie, but it was too exaggerated and didn't harmonize with the rest of the scene.

My second lighting change by adjusting the light’s brightness and color was this image, which was balanced with the other parts, but the lighting was distracting and not calming.

So I cleaned up the unnecessary lights and unrealistic lights. And tweaked the placement of objects to match the lights.

I went on to adjust the Slope and Toe to balance shading on the screen and used a LUT to calibrate the color of the scene. Using LUT to calibrate colors gives the entire scene a smooth feel and a nice style. I want it to feel silence and a cold ambiance, so I choose a bluish one

During the process, I took a lot of movie references, not just The Hateful Eight. It is very helpful to analyze the mood created by lighting and color in movie scenes. I’ve looked at a Shotdeck site to find the kind of images I want. They are categorized by color, genre, lighting, and more for your reference. It is very useful to find what you want.

Conclusion

I didn't start out with a clear idea of what I wanted to represent, but in retrospect, I think I had a clear set of values that I was striving for while creating the project:

• Inviting Atmosphere
• Beautiful Composition
• Interesting Narratives

Since I started drawing as a kid, I never liked to draw things as they are. When I started this project, I didn't think about adding new elements that weren't in the movie, but as I was working on the project, I kept being concerned about how to make it more attractive instead of making it as it is. And as a result, I was able to apply my own values. so I think I ended up with a satisfying project that I enjoyed making and that other people liked as well.

There are many things I wanted to express but didn't because I wasn't good enough or didn't know how, and I'm someone who still has a lot to learn but if you've enjoyed my project, thank you so much. I've enjoyed this project, so I'll be happy if others do too.

Finally, I would like to thank 80 Level for giving me the opportunity to showcase my project to everyone. It was truly an honor and a fun experience.