How do I make Text look like ICE? For example, I want the words COLD written in icey-looking text.

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=22035 [sidefx.com]

This Procedural Video does not show me how to turn TEXT into ICE. I saw the entire 30 minute Video and the Video did not show me how to use Houdini to turn TEXT into ICE.

Do you have some reference picture that you could show in regards to what type of ice you are looking for?

The simplest one could be:
*) make some text (font sop)
*) polyextrude the text
*) add more detail with a divide sop
*) Smooth it further with a subdivide and/or a smooth sop
*) apply a glass material
*) google the index of refraction (IOR) for ice
*) put the IOR into the glass material.
*) put an environment light with an HDR image to get something to be refracted/reflected for the ice letters.
*) if you want to go all out, add caustics with a caustic light.
*) render with PBR using these settings:
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&p=100825#100825 [sidefx.com]

If you want to add snow on top, or icecones hanging from the bottom, or a bit of bubbles inside the ice or perhaps some blurry reflection areas on your letters, you can add all those as individual elements to the above basic setup.

For the shattering I would recommend you to look at the help for the shatter tools, from the Journals it states:
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Houdini 11.0.604: Added in a set of Fracture Examples from John Lynch that shows eight different fracture simulations using the Voronoi Fracture Solver.

So if you download the latest build, you should be able to access those examples.

there are three videos so far in this series - one of them shows you how to fracture an object…you could learn how to fracture an object using these tutorials and then replace that object with your text…
then you could look into shading that object….

fxwizard
This Procedural Video does not show me how to turn TEXT into ICE. I saw the entire 30 minute Video and the Video did not show me how to use Houdini to turn TEXT into ICE.

Where can I get an HDR Image for my Houdini Project? Is a TIFF file considered a HDR Image?

Yes.
A tiff file can contain High Dynamic Range values (values in excess of 8bits per channel) but that doesn't qualify it as an environment map and that is your real question:

Can a tiff file contain an HDR “Environment” image with real lighting information in the pixels?
Yes.

Houdini ships with three low res HDR images in $HFS/pic for you to use and test stuff out. I believe there are some more HDR images on the Houdini Exchange.

Troll around the net as there are some free HDR images around.

I like this site, hope it helps.

http://www.hdrlabs.com [hdrlabs.com]

eitht.

this may be useful too : http://ict.debevec.org/~debevec/Probes/ [ict.debevec.org]