Installed Octane 2021.1.6.0 for Houdini 19.5.368
Haven't used this render engine for 3 years.
3 questions

1) render target is created in MAT context by default although i see in tutorials it gets created in SHOP

2) to get your displacement texture to work you just need to enable tessellation on your obj? its not working for me, are there any other steps

3)what about SSS?

Any resources out there to improve the learning curve a bit?

Hello - If you use Octane then i can really reccomend the OD Tools Octane 'QuickSetup 2021'
https://vimeo.com/380742237 [vimeo.com]
https://origamidigital.com/cart/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=66 [origamidigital.com]

That said, you can create the Octane Render Target in a 'Matnet' or 'shopnet' within SOPS i think many of the tutorials a quite old.
It's ages since ive used displacement but i think you pipe in a DISPLACMENT node to the displacement slot on root material and then your texture into that displacement node. It's then a case of playing with the heights on the dispacement node

I know Rohan Dalvi has a few tutorial on his YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfGN9OlJF9KakdyUK04M3cA [www.youtube.com]
And Entagma have used it on some of their tutorial too, although none spacifially about Octane, more using it as the render engine as part of another tutorial.