In Blender, there is a feature called "Extrude Manifold" that allows us to do this:



How to do this in Houdini? The usual PolyExtrude gives this:

The modeler plugin has a function called push. The toolset is a great addition to Houdini.
Cheers
CYTE

As cool as it is... is there a way to do this without third-party plugin?

You can do it with boolean, I've made some experiments combining extrude with boolean and some cleanup operations.

How good is that Push Pull functionality within Modeler plugin? Any close to 3ds Max Smart Extrude implementation? The Blender one is largely unfinished.

Very good. Here is a video from a quite a while back that will give you a flavour. This is the OLD modeller interface, current version is much different and improved.

YouTube https://youtu.be/mQ-Hfq3mwcI?si=I9NFcPpCmy7fQrTw [youtu.be]

Modeller has a discord channel here: https://discord.gg/xR22PP99 [discord.gg]

Modeler is well worth the money, this is just one example why.