I've been using Maya for a while and I'm trying to master houdini. I like that it is procedural thats a big leg up but i cant get my head around some stuff they look like thery are to many nodes to understand. I can create smoke and change a few setting and create some destruction with some few basic destructions but I can't get my head around how the nodes connect together and what they mean (I just use the shelves). For example when I create a billowy smoke houdini seems to create all these nodes and they're not just connected node to node (meaning inside the nodes they are also things like variables referring to objects ). So when I use the same nodes to try create my on smoke simulation it doesn't work. another problem is that when i watch older tutorials it seems like houdini changes how nodes are linked with each version. Not to mention all this business about Dops,Sops,Chops, sop to DOp, Dop to Sop , Lops,sops, zop, xops, lops to chops, to crops…..arghhhh i just dont get it. can someone recommend the best way to learn houdini coming from maya. I haven't even bothered with trying to model in that software because I just keep exporting in geo from maya. Sorry for the long post but i seriously need HELLPPPP….

you really do need to go through the tutorials - just to get familiar with how to “think Houdini”

https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=247&Itemid=403 [sidefx.com]

and it might help to click the “?” icon on the top right of each node's parameter pane - this will open the help card for this node…even just a quick read through will give you a better idea of what the node is for and how it is related to the other nodes in the network…

as for the OPs
there are different contexts in Houdini
SOP = Surface OPerator - this is points, prims, etc
DOP = Dynamic OPerators
COP = Compositing OPerators
etc

I've tried to make examples that are friendly to maya folk, might be useful. The dops examples especially are as clean as I could make ‘em, but I’d suggest you start with the basic houdini ones first.

Or better, start with the soup tutorials, will help bridge some stuff from maya to houdini, and make you appreciate how much cleaner the houdini way is.

http://www.tokeru.com/cgwiki/index.php?title=HoudiniDops [tokeru.com]

http://www.tokeru.com/cgwiki/index.php?title=Houdini [tokeru.com]

http://www.tokeru.com/cgwiki/index.php?title=Soup [tokeru.com]

Many +1's for mestela's cgwiki pages. Think I must have read them all now and all incredibly useful. Also makes a nice change from all the tutorial videos