I wonder if this is related to the bug mentioned in this thread: Path mapping with Houdini plugin - #3 by antoinedurr
The original poster said:
There’s a Houdini bug where rbdfracturematerial SOPs cook themselves to death when the DL code calls hou.fileReferences() (and rbdbulletsolver SOPs don’t seem immune either).
I’ve submitted a bug to SESI r.e. the crazy cooking caused by hou.fileReferences(), ticket #105440 / bug #112903.
Can you try commenting out the call to
parms = gather_parms_to_map()
if parms:
pathmap_parms(tempdir, parms)
inside the hrender_dl.py to see if it changes the behavior?
It is possible that the attempt to collect the external references by calling hou.fileReferences() is causing this.