Using a Rig Pose after MotionClip Evaluate should work. If you're modifying after Bone Deform, then you're editing the mesh so it's going to be harder. There's no difference about this with nodes in Houdini. Each node takes in some geometry and outputs some geometry. How the input geometry got that way is irrelevant.

Create points for the lights in SOPs whichever way is most convenient. It kinda depends on your situation. To now move the lights to the point positions, you'll need to use CHOPs. In a CHOPnet, use the Geometry CHOP to import those light positions in Animated Mode. You'll need to name the imported channels to some naming convention that matches your OBJ lights. Now just export this to your light Translate parameters. If you need rotations, then you can add some channels for them in CHOPs as well.

Well, if you're already compiling with /MD, then I don't know what the problem is. I have no idea why this has anything to do with Diagnostic Tools. Have you tried going back to SOP_Star to see if that still works? Oh wait, you're using VS 2019 ... that's because they're buggered.

https://www.sidefx.com/faq/houdini-indie-faq/#faq175 Emphasize added that there are no restrictions for still images on an Indie license.

You can't build debug and use it with Houdini because it's likely to break due to the use of the Debug CRT. Instead, you should change your debug configuation to use the Release CRT ie. the /MD compiler option instead of /MDd. Breakpoints/crashes should be fine but try setting the environment variable HOUDINI_INTERNAL_IGNORE_SIGNALS to 1 before starting Houdini.

The sin hscript expression function takes degrees (unlike I think the VEX one).

You use a MDD ROP (Output) node to write out MDD caches and you can read them back in using MDD SOP (Geometry) nodes. If you want instancing of the sequence, I think Packed Disk Sequence primitives are what you're looking for http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/model/packed.html#packeddiskseq

I think the easiest way is probably hit Ctrl+A in the network editor to select all the objects. This should scope all the translate/rotates on them. Now you can just scale them in the Animation Editor > Dopesheet.

Can you save the output of the Agent SOP to a .bgeo file and post it here?

Why do you need to run it with sudo? The steps should just be something like: $ cd /opt/hfs16.5.XYZ $ source houdini_setup The Houdini 16.5.XYZ environment has been initialized. $ cd ~/Documents/wherever_your_bvh_is $ mcbiovision Usage: mcbiovision [-e -b -d] [-c] [-v] [-j object_script] [-o -w -f -s -i [-n -t -l chainfile]] infile [outfile] This program converts a BioVision motion file to a Houdini script & channel file(s). Run the script to create the geometry and channels. ...etc...

What happens if you render the agent in Mantra?

VDB Visualize Tree SOP or perhaps Volume Slice SOP depending on what you need.

Just the heads or the entire agent? For the entire agent, probably a POP Look At. For just the heads, see http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/crowds/states#lookat

When it better to uses Volumes over VDBs? - When you don't have as mentioned above - When you have a data on nearly every voxel, making it not sparse anymore.

PolyFill is one of the new options in H16 to cap holes. It's worth a try.