Noctua has good coolers and your RAM should be at least 128GB.

You can use the Extract Transform Sop for that. It just needs the objects once with transforms applied and once without any transforms and calculates a proper transform attribute for each of them useable while instancing. You can either use the foreach approach or copy your reference object as much as you have target geometry, both methods work. instance_v2_yader.hiplc

Instancing looks for attributes on those points, otherwise it doesn't know how Pos Rot Scale should look like. You can go very different ways about this. The easiest is to probably save your transforms as a transform attribute and set all transforms on your points to zero. See attached scene. I marked the changed nodes yellow. instance_yader.hiplc

Another method, which is dependent on what kind of objects you have, is to iteratively use the ray sop set to minDist with a low value and then blur inside a sop solver. See attached scene: blend_pos_yader.hiplc

Take a look at the shapematch constraint. It's suitable for rigid bodies. That way you don't have to leave vellum. Vellum_RBD_interaction_v0001_yader.hiplc Vellum_RBD_interaction_v0001_yader.mp4

How did you create your gradient? There is maybe another way of distorting it without vops...

Here's a free orbolt tool using the aforementioned poisson reconstruction executable: https://www.orbolt.com/asset/organics::organics_sop_poisson_surface_reconstruction_wrapper

You could also use the pre made pop advect by volumes, calculate the vol gradient beforehand and just set the velocity scale to -1. sdf_bounds_Yader_03.hiplc

Look into the Distance from Geometry SOP, that should give you the growing pattern your looking for.

You need to prepare your geo, so it's interpreted correctly by the pathdeform. Zero out rotation and translation by utilizing xform from the bound sop.

Not in front of Houdini, but unwrap a classic polygon mesh sphere, set P to uv and then use a point deform taking the hexagon plane with it the way back?

You can do that in many ways, here's a simple one. Put down a Sop Solver in your DOP Network and inside put down a Primitive SOP with the following code in the three Scale Parameters: clamp(1-(@deactivation_time/2),0,1)

Could be thousand things, how big is your geo/scene? Are it's normals fine? How are your SSS settings?

"Uvs and Attributes" is the last tab on the Sweep SOP. If it doesn't fix your issue you should upload something illustrating your problem.

Uncheck Normalize U's and Normalize V's on your Sweeps Uvs and Attributes tab and additionally uncheck Snap U and V to Nearest Tile Boundary under Section UV Seams on the same tab.