silent_soul

Not really understanding how you can't learn from tutorials already out there. There is plenty of information to understand how things work. If you are looking for some pretty damn decent photo-realism this might work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKqpvriKZuA [youtube.com]

That was all done in Houdini 9.5 and composited in Shake. Mantra has improved significantly since then. You also might want to check out 3D Buzz. The guy that made that video, Steve Twist work(ed) there and created a large series of tutorials that focus on technical aspects and Houdini in a much deeper manner than other tutorial sites. Check 'em out.

I'm still learning as I don't have as much time as I'd like to devote to Houdini 24/7, but I'm taking the necessary steps.

I've bought from Digital Tutors, CMI and 3DBuzz.

Digital Tutors is good for the basics and a general understanding. The instructor is clear and easy to understand.

CMI focuses on some more advanced things and is pretty good. My two downfalls for CMI are that the instructors are hard to understand for some of the series and you can't download any of the material (it's only streaming). I think this may be changing.

3DBuzz lays down an impeccable amount of detail and thought process behind how Houdini works. That is invaluable. Granted the projects aren't the most amazing, but it is hard to please everyone and the things they choose to do do cover a lot of bases and provide an excellent resource.

If I would have read further down I would have found this:
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=20312 [sidefx.com]

Which handled my problem. ops: