Destroying things in Houdini for a Unity project

I have been working with Houdini to develop some cool effects and content for Unity and working on a custom "Effects Framework" toolset which plays along with Houdini and my external tool chain. I've learned a lot of cool features in Houdini, such as RBD destruction nodes shown in this video.

I am simulating a spherical object (with visual damage done to it) which falls and smashes my concrete tile. By playing around with forces and parameters like the strength of "glue" holding pieces together, I am able to get some visually interesting results like this simulation. I just liked how the big piece flies up, spins in the air and then hits the ground and breaks apart!

The idea behind using these efficiently in Unity is that you export your geometry (meshes in .FBX format) and use what are called "VATs" (vertex animation textures) to store the packed movement data for the destruction pieces. A special shader in your game engine can then animate the vertices without using expensive skeletal animation systems and skinned meshes.

[platinumsun]

You are experienced, can you recommend any material? Text books or the like to learn programming into? I just want it as a hobby.
I am just going to become an electrician but whats a man without passions.

I want to avoid C# unless its not actually as bad as Java (I rather dislike Java little that I have touched it, I did touch C# 4 years ago and rememebr nothing about it but people always compare it to Java), currently giving C++ some attention, I will probably look at the public Havard materials as apparently its best for self taught hobbyists. I have only ever really had 2 ideas for a game, 1 being 3d and another 2d. Mostly though my dream is to make something like Rainmaker for Linux. Or even some sort of universal application GUI scraper. I've been black pilled by Jonathan Blow, I don't see a world where GUI's on web or desktop applications really improve from where we are.

Ah I see you started a Discord that is convenient.