Hello,

I am having extreme difficulty learning this software. I need tutorials on how to do realistic fracturing and explosions. All the tutorials I come up with seem to be abstract or cost money to view.

Some of the tutorials don't even work, such as this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTIeGob0Wuo [youtube.com]

I've followed all the directions but I cant seem to get the level of detail he's getting. Heck, when I get to the rendering part, I get an entirely different feature set.

I think Houdini is very interesting software, but the learning curve is making it very difficult for me to get a grasp of this software. Any help is appreciated.

To my experience a big part of difficulties often lies in the difference of used Houdini versions. Make sure to use the same version as in the tutorial.
That will already give you more chance to be successful.

Good luck, Robert