Hi, i'm new to houdini and i'm trying to do a simple electricity effect. I'm trying to spawn the effect on a certain part of the of the geometry by using color id with the paint node, but even when i select the node the pointer keeps moving the camera and i don't know how to activate the brush to paint.

Thank you for your help, guys, and sorry for the newbie question.

Once you have the paint node selected and displayed, go in the toolbar on the left of the screen where there are several icons.
Between the other icons there are also the move, rotate and scale icons. You need to select the icon called “Show Handle”.

An alternative is to use the shortcut for this “show handle” which is pressing Enter with the cursor in the viewport.