BabaJ

What I normally do is take the original photo image and play with it in something Like Photoshop - and create/run it through color/misc. adjustments saving out as an export - making note of it's resolution.

Create grid in Houdini with same resolution and bring the image in using an attribute from map node.

Run that through a wrangle for height adjustment with any code that suits your purpose.

Afterwards you can reapply color attributes from another Photoshop exported layer or even the original image.

“but something like Vex - being able to ask questions and solve problems with others who are on similar levels of skill could be quite valuable and help people with sticking with it. Anyone interested?”

You have a good idea…but don't let that stop you from getting into it right away. You might be surprised that it won't take too long to get very good/use to working with vex.

Go ahead and start exploratory examples/projects and post your hip with your questions here. Besides getting feedback for yourself, you will be helping others who may be having the same questions now and in the future(through forum searches).

Generally once cooking starts your at the ‘OS’ level where the cpu is engaged, so you can't really stop at that point.

With exception, because if you try pressing ESC(or even spamming ESC in a small number of cases), you might have some luck in the OS picking up that ESC interupt and stop the whole cooking process. But it really depends on what's going in the specific cook process/s involved that is engaging the CPU.(Some ‘cooks’ may involve ‘more than one process’ where the CPU is fully engaged and have gaps in which the OS is able to process the ESC.

Otherwise you just might be stuck with a very long cook if you done something like in vex in which you unintentionaly did something in your code that results in a very long ‘runoff’ process, which the only alternative left if you want to break is to close the file with the Task Manager.

However, judging by your posts title, you probably mean something else? Like maybe stopping between TOP ‘tasks’?

Perhaps if that's is the case, keep your eyes peeled on your post for someone who has worked with TOPs more than I and understands what your after.