Building a Modern African Kitchen (and a World) in USD

Rat Trap Project – Post 14:Building a Modern African Kitchen

This week was all about world-building—piece by piece, node by node. I took a major step forward by updating the kitchen set, reshaping it into a modern space accented with African textures and design cues. Interestingly, it wasn’t a full rebuild. One of the most powerful parts of working in USD is the ability to reuse, remix, and repurpose without starting from scratch. So the dining table, chairs, and center island from the previous kitchen returned, but the environment around them evolved.

I redesigned the boundary walls, created new kitchen cabinet structures, and infused everything with African character—motif patterns, warm tones, and cultural textures. For the decorative paintings in the dining area, I leaned into AI image generation to produce custom artwork. This gave me expressive visuals that fit the tone of the world while speeding up the creative process in a surprisingly natural way. But the biggest unlock, again, was USD.

I could lift entire digital asset node structures from one project and drop them seamlessly into another. That’s how Baker Girl, in her Edo outfit, entered the new kitchen with all her lookdev and lighting preserved. The pipeline simply accepted her—no broken links, no surprise overrides, no re-authoring of materials. Just plug-and-play creativity.

This project has always been experimental, but not in the superficial sense. The goal was to intentionally explore how to build a cinematic world using USD as the backbone, and this kitchen milestone is a real example of that. It’s still a work in progress, but now the foundation is strong, reusable, and scalable. And that’s the real win.

With the environment taking shape, the focus now shifts to the beating heart of this short film—the characters and the chaos they bring. Specifically: the rats, and all the procedural magic required to bring their world to life.

Houdini is primed for this step.The project roadmap includes:

• RBD simulations for collisions, breakages, and debris

• Vellum soft-body work for glue traps and body interactions

• Crowd simulations for the movement of multiple rats

• Pyro for smoke shots

• FLIP/fluids where needed

• And general FX layering to unearth the “action” part of the story

  
  

Now that the kitchen is taking shape inside a solid USD pipeline, the next challenge is preparing the simulation pipeline for the VFX work ahead. Everything done so far—node organization, asset structuring, naming conventions, layering—sets the stage for that.

What we’re building here isn’t just a short film. It’s an evolving world-building pipeline—a process we can lift and reuse for future Paitan Media projects. The kitchen, the nodes behind it, the way Baker Girl was integrated… all of these are steps toward a larger vision:

A repeatable African-centered animated filmmaking pipeline powered by Houdini, USD, and thoughtful experimentation. Piece by piece, it’s coming together.

#TheRatTrap #PaitanMedia #AfricanAnimation #Metahuman #HoudiniSolaris #SideFX #UnrealToHoudini #3DModeling #USD #Houdini #PipelineDesign #AnimationNigeria #UnrealEngine #Nollywood