Celebrating Small Wins

The Rat Trap Project – Post 10: Celebrating Small Wins

This week, I planned to demonstrate my animation pipeline—but my son had other ideas. He asked, “Why doesn’t Baker Girl have hair or eyebrows?” That question changed my plan. I decided to groom her.

I jumped into Houdini’s new MetaHuman groom tools, eager to style and animate her within a week. What I didn’t expect was how much I would learn along the way. The MetaHuman workflow was designed to create complex hairstyles procedurally on MetaHuman heads, fully compatible with Unreal Engine’s Groom system.

As I worked, I realized it behaves differently from Houdini’s conventional groom system. At first, I tried mixing nodes from both systems, thinking it would be straightforward—but errors kept popping up. Through trial and error, and with guidance from the SideFX Learning Library, I learned how to prepare the skin geometry and head VDB from the MetaHuman head, customize scalp regions, and paint procedural masks to control hair placement.

Every part of the groom required care. I refined the front hairline for realistic baby hairs, created spiral buns, and groomed the eyebrows to look natural and expressive. Along the way, I learned about guide curves, density attributes, and attribute propagation, as well as the importance of keeping the workflow procedural. The entire setup is now almost fully procedural, so it can be adapted to any character—a hard-earned win after days of learning and experimentation.

The look isn’t finished yet. I plan to complete the hair accessory by changing it to African coral beads in the style of a traditional Benin hairstyle, as well as add a traditional Benin necklace. I also plan to finish the animation as originally intended. I hope the Benin beads don’t take too long, as I’ll be creating the texture map procedurally in Copernicus. Either way, the week ahead looks fun-filled.

I’m proud of this small victory. From 2021, when I had a vision to change visual storytelling in Nigeria through computer graphics, to 2025, where I can achieve near-photorealistic results, it’s been an incredible journey.

Paitan Media has grown alongside me. Each small win fuels our ambition. I can’t wait to see what we achieve in the next five years.

#TheRatTrap #PaitanMedia #AfricanAnimation #IndieFilmPipeline #Metahuman #HoudiniSolaris #MaterialX #IndieAnimation #UnrealToHoudini , #APEX, #NigerianAnimation #AfricanVFX #3DModeling #USD #Houdini #PipelineDesign #InnovationInAfrica #AnimationNigeria, #UnrealEngine, #UE56, #Nollywood