Mike Abbott

Just a heads-up that Modeller is currently on sale (a once-a-year event)... see: https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/98767/ [www.sidefx.com]

Houdini has in the past been a very mixed bag for modellers - excellent for procedural modelling, but painful for more traditional direct work. However... we now have an excellent direct modelling plugin called 'Modeller 2025' - available here:
https://alexeyvanzhula.gumroad.com/ [alexeyvanzhula.gumroad.com]
check out the very helpful Discord group here: https://discord.gg/keG9eA6E [discord.gg]

Houdini native plus modeller is a killer combination.

There is a lot of functionality in Houdini's transform handles. If you want an excellent and comprehensive introduction you can grab 5 hours of top quality free training that covers this here:
https://www.hipflask.how/the-core-essentials [www.hipflask.how]

"Lastly, if equivalent tools don’t exist, do you think these could be built and reused?"

This is really the essence of Houdini - it's really a 3D CG tool building kit, with a decent set of pre-built tools to get started with.

Report your bugs via this page:
https://www.sidefx.com/bugs/submit/ [www.sidefx.com]