The Scene Graph Tree of the Stage Manager is a reduced version of the tree in Houdini’s Solaris desktop. In the LOP you have path, visibility and activation. There are also on-demand buttons for removing a reference from the tree and adding a child.

Note that the Scene Graph is not an isolated UI element, but instead it communicates with the tabs on the Stage Manager UI’s right column and the Transforms tab. You can find more information on the interplay of the Scene Graph Tree with the managers other tabs in the appropriate chapters of this help.

Of course, you can ⇧ Shift-click multiple entries and change their visibility and activation states at once. And, when you double-click the name of an entry, you can change its name.

A right-click menu provides a wide range of convenient features like copy and paste, duplicating or grouping. Grouping is also available through the ⌃ Ctrl + D shortcut. This action duplicates all selected references and creates siblings next to their originals.

You can also use ⌃ Ctrl + C and ⌃ Ctrl + V shortcuts to copy and paste primitives inside the Scene Graph Tree. To paste an item from the clipboard to one or more references, select the item(s) and press ⌃ Ctrl + V. Depending on your selection you will see different behaviors

• Paste to a single item: paste as children.

• Paste to the same items as copied: paste as siblings of each copied item.

• Paste to multiple different items: create a group at root level and paste as children.

This tab shows the nodes of the Scene Graph Tree along with their current transformations for position, rotation and scale in XYZ direction. If you're familiar with the Edit LOP, you might recognize the Transform tab’s layout. because its exactly the same in terms of UI and functionality.

When you change any of those parameters in the viewport, you can see the new values directly in the Stage Manager. Alternatively, you can also double-click an entry and enter a value.

The transform handle is automatically enabled when you select a reference. With multiple selections, the handle appears in the centroid of all selected items.

Like on the Edit LOP, there’s also a Physics column with checkboxes.

To use the physics option, select the Stage Manager LOP and go to the viewport. On top of the viewport you can see a toolbar. There, turn on Use Physics.

• Select the prims you want to be able to move and click Add Physics on the viewport toolbar or turn on the appropriate checkbox on the Stage Manager’s Transforms tab. Selected prims can have their positions and rotations affected by the simulation. Not selected prims act as static colliders that don’t move.

• You can use the handles to transform the selected prims all at once.

• Alternatively, you can drag on a selected prim to “push/pull” that prim by that point. Other selected prims can be affected by the prim you're dragging. Not selected prims act as static colliders that don’t move.

• Shrift-drag on a selected prim to “push/pull” all selected prims at once. Use the to drop or raise the selected prims with physics. This is useful to the objects into a natural-looking pile.

The Inspector tab is not only for your information, but it’s also a versatile and convenient tool for your work with object and material variants from assets.

For example, when you load an asset with multiple variants and select it, you will see that the tab’s UI elements are now fully functional. The Kind dropdown menu indicates that you've loaded a component, but you can also assign a different kind.

To save memory, you can make a primitive a native instance and explicitly mark it as instanceable. USD supports two types of instancing

• Instanceable primitives, where multiple copies of the same branch are aliases to shared storage.

• Point instancing, where USD stores points and prototypes to copy onto the points, but only draws the copies at render time.

The Variant Sets section lets you quickly switch between an asset’s variants by choosing a material and/or a geometry from the appropriate dropdown menu. The chosen object/material is then visible in the viewport. Note that Variant Sets are not available for multi-selections.

The Reference Detail section is collapsed by default. Expand it to see its parameters. The Reference Prim button opens a pop-up dialog that lets you choose the prim to reference in. Currently, Asset Paths and Resolved Asset Paths are identical, but this will change in the future.

By default, the File Browser shows a tree structure of your computer’s user directory. The browser works in the same way as the Scene Graph Tree with collapsible and expandable branches. If you want to jump to another drive you can enter a root path or a complete path to the input field. When you leave the input field blank, you will see all mounted drives. The dropdown menu next to the input field saves a history of the last paths used.

You can expand the tree’s drives and folders to navigate to a USD file or an asset folder. To add the file/folder to the scene you have two possibilities. Drag the item onto the

• Scene Graph Tree of the Scene Graph tab

• viewport, then press Enter to finally add the object.

Alternatively, you can also use an external file browser - typically the one from your operating system. With this method you have the same possibilities listed above: tree and viewport.

When you drag items from the File Browser onto a reference in the Scene Graph, you have these options

• Dragging an entry from the File Browser onto an existing reference will child the new item and set the appropriate Kind (Group parent → component child, Component parent → subcomponent child). Note that Kind hierarchies have not been enforced beyond this as you might have bespoke kinds. If you require to change the child’s Kind, you can also do that in the Inspector tab.

• ⌃ Ctrl-dragging onto an existing reference will replace the reference while maintaining the original name. You can see the change in the Inspector tab’s Reference Prim parameter.

The Asset Catalog, also known as Layout Asset Gallery, has the exact the same functionality as described in the link.

Of course, you can load custom catalogs and populate the stage with your own assets. If an asset has multiple variants, you can see them in the Inspector tab’s Variant Sets section and choose a material or a geometry from the dropdown menus.

The Asset Catalog supports the same drag options as the File Browser.

The previous chapters illustrate what you can do with the Stage Manager, but what does that mean practically? Typical scenarios include assets with object or material variants. The Stage Manager helps you to quickly populate a scene by creating copies, parent-child pairs, groups, and apply different materials with very few clicks.

The following example explains how to quickly create a large number of objects with texture variants. Here, the objects are differently colored pharmacy bottles from a custom asset catalog. We assume that you've already prepared a catalog.