I dunno where to ask this, but there are basically no VOP or SHOP operator examples in the Houdini Help. Are these under the works? These are the only two *OPs without examples, so what's up. If anyone at SideFx is listening, please make some por favor . Also, I love the operator examples, whoever though of that is awesome, you get a big thumbs up.

I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for but any of the VOPs you put down under Tab > Materials are actually VOP networks so you can dive inside to see how they are done.

Also, from the top main menu, choose Tools > Shader Palette. Now jump to $HFS/houdini/shop/palette. From there, pick a category and create any of these example shops. Now in SHOPs, right-click on the created shop and choose Edit Vop Network. This should give you more examples (which in turn are composed of various vop networks themselves).

Oh I feel dumb, those are both good suggestions but I would still ask for some operator examples as those have step by step comments to explain everything that have been really really helpful for other operators. Also, it's better for the docs, you can search through them and such.

You are not alone

I'd have to say that so far after about 4 months of learning Houdini coming from Max, particles / rigging / dynamics / chops / expressions … no problem. Shops / VEX, still a big problem.

I understand how powerful the Houdini approach to shaders is at this point but the tutorials and examples don't seem to provide much context or practicality. For instance, it would be great to have examples of common things you can do in other applications, and then taken farther with proceduralism.

I also got the city-building DVD but it didn't go into this area as much as I wanted it to. Some of the 2-5 paragraph web tutorials have made the most sense so far, is there any good resources for broad overviews of the workflow in this area of Houdini?