This is work in progress. I'm in the process of porting the following feature from branch usd-importer-T81257 to branch usd-importer-T81257-merge:
Provide experimental "instancing" option to import USD scenegraph instances as Blender collection instances. (This will handle only "instanceable" USD primitives, and not point-instancers.)
I've committed the new experimental Instancing feature to branch usd-importer-T81257-merge. See the attached image of editing a prototype.
Among the remaining issues:
It would be better if the "prototypes" folder that contains the instance collections were initially closed, to reduce the clutter in the outliner.
The instance collection names currently correspond to the names of the masters (e.g., /__Master_24). This isn't intuitive and might vary between runs, so the naming scheme should be improved.
Need to make sure instance collections are properly handled on export as well.
This is work in progress. I'm in the process of porting the following feature from branch usd-importer-T81257 to branch usd-importer-T81257-merge:
Provide experimental "instancing" option to import USD scenegraph instances as Blender collection instances. (This will handle only "instanceable" USD primitives, and not point-instancers.)
I will update this issue when I commit this work.