Hi, can someone explain how instancing works in USD, in houdini, or just in USD as is please? I don't understand this.

Why I can't translate, rotate, and scale primitives inside components marked as instance. In classic workflows like Maya or Blender, I can "copy as instance" assets and translate, rotate, and scale their sub-primitives (objects). Im not even talking about material differentiation. 

I know there is something like variants, but please... I won't be creating n numbers of variants just for differentiation for one specific shot.

Im not talking about instancing trees or grass. Im talking about instancing objects and manually placing them in the scene. See blenderInstance.mp4 attached file.

Maybe reference is more like classic instancing where I can manipulate sub-primitives of an asset, but is this saving memory like instance?