www.si-community.com

julca wrote:There are also a bit old but useful Softimage to Houdini Guides from Jordi Bares.
He also said on his thread on sidefx forum that he's working on the new guides (sidefx thread).

They are still great as first, general info about, however not that much about VOPs or attributes there (at least this was in 2014).
Back to VOPs, I think it's good idea to take look at Attribute SOPs first, Attribute Create, Promote and such, they are providing a lot of functionality that in ICE belongs to get data from certain location, things like getting the attribute attached to polygon for use over points. For small example related to curves or strands, at first look it seemed impossible to get ICE style of switching between point and strand attributes, or curve to point in H. Later I found options from Attribute Promote SOP (minimum, maximum, average, summary...) as probably fastest equivalent to array ops in ICE.

Now about understanding the global concepts of H, I think great help is to learn something about... well.. Maya and Maya nodes. In many ways, Houdini stands as an complement to Maya, with exactly opposite concepts and capabilities. Maya is totally 'flat node context', while H is precisely divided to SOP DOP and whatever, Maya hates topology operations while H is able to break anything at any time but all that in H is not so fast, so on.

Hirazi Blue wrote:Are there any tutorials specifically geared towards understanding vops/vex from the perspective of Softimage ICE users?

It's not aimed directly at XSI users but the Jumpstart series over at HelloLuxx has a volume specifically aimed at users new to VOP's - Vol 7.

http://helloluxx.com/product-category/houdini-training/

The tutor, Adam Swaab strikes the perfect balance of hand holding without being condescending. All seven volumes are available as a discounted bundle too.

@hizari
I don't know if you saw this ones but they are good intro too from an XSI POV ! https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/author/mixepix/

Bullit wrote:

All of these Entagma tutorials are excellent. Short and very well explained. Better than a lot of paid stuff.

SamHowell wrote:

Bullit wrote:

All of these Entagma tutorials are excellent. Short and very well explained. Better than a lot of paid stuff.

Agreed. And best of all they're all using the most recent techniques. Houdini's gone through some major changes in a relatively short space of time - since H13 really. And a lot of tutorials you'll find scattered about the web are using less performant techniques.

I'd definitely start with the early ones first though. Even the very first tutorial gets into some relatively deep stuff fast (VEX Wrangles). And there's a definite bias for motion design - which keeps the likes of Sam & me happy but it's good to know before getting stuck in.