Eulenspiegel

The easiest way is to stick it into an env-light..

For an “IBL”-type of lighting workflow there's a tutorial DVD advertised on the sidefx frontpage that deals with convoluted HDRs and normal lookups.

Most character workflows (at least for highres characters) these days are more like:

- Build rough basemesh
- Export that to a sculpting application like ZBrush/Mudbox/3DCoat/etc
- Sculpt the actual model there
- Retopologize the model
- Bake out displacement maps
- Re-import the retopo-mesh, UVs and displacement maps into the host application

So for Houdini you could grab generic poly modeling tutorials, since the basemeshes are usually fairly simple.

Looks pretty good, your other stuff on vimeo too (especially the green ball)