Using Native USD workflows

Composition - New nodes for scene composition are determined by LIVRPS ordering. These are guidelines ordered by Local, Inherits, VariantSets, References, Payload, and Specializes that determine how pieces of a 3D scene work together effectively. For example, UsdSubLayerAdd to add a layer to the stage.

See Composition arcs - understanding LIVRPS for more information about this.
See USD Nodes: Composition for links to the reference guide topics.

Note: In Katana 7, VariantSets are not included for authoring but you can change which variant is used via the UsdVariantSet node.
Prims - The following nodes to let you create and modify schemas. UsdPrimCreate for prim generation and overriding, and UsdSchemaSet to assign a schema API to a prim.
For both nodes, Katana speeds up the workflow by tailoring the UI to the selected prim or schema type automatically. Simply select a type, and the node properties are dynamically populated by the USD version used, with its parameters defined within the USD API itself.

A cube type with matching parameters generated dynamically.

Additionally, there are more specialised nodes, such as UsdLight, UsdCamera, UsdScope and UsdXform nodes, based on the UsdPrimCreate but with parameter tailored for each purpose, allowing you to create different types of prims easily.
See Native USD Prims, Native USD Lights, and Creating Native USD Cameras.
Properties - New nodes for essential stage modifications. For example, UsdTransformSet and UsdTransformEdit to apply a transform to a prim, and to enable viewer manipulators for native USD. See Native USD Transformations.
USD’s Pattern-Based Collections (PBC) is also integrated into Katana. Similar to Katana’s CEL, the PBC widget and UsdCollection node allows you to use, define and modify USD collections, helping make workflows more efficient. See Pattern-Based Collections with USD.

For more about assigning materials in USD, see UsdMaterialAssign workflows.

See USD Nodes: Properties for links to the reference guide topics.
Output - You can now use UsdLayerExport and UsdLayerDefine to bake native USD layers. See Native USD Layer Export.
Other (Pipeline/TD Tools) - We’ve added a UsdLayerWrite node so that you can take or create a scene description stored as .usda, edit it, and manually write it to the stage. This is useful when you need to quickly add content to locations in the scene. Plus, UsdPythonWrite gives you the power of Python to author USD layers. To make workflows more flexible, UsdToKatana and KatanaToUsd let you convert USD data into Katana data, and vice versa. You also can use USD Text View to view .usda data based on the selected node, helping with debugging.

Scene Explorer

The Scene Explorer tab provides a unified scene graph view of both USD and Katana data so that you can easily traverse and manipulate the hierarchical structure of the entire asset library.

For more information see Using the Scene Explorer.

USD Properties Viewable in the Attributes Tab

We’ve integrated USD property inspection into the Attributes tab, making it easy to check the attributes, relationships and metadata for prims and properties in the scene. Just click on a prim in the Scene Explorer to see the data in the Attributes tab. See Inspecting USD Properties Using the Attributes Tab.