A parks gardener’s plaza edits never appear on the composed stage even though the USDA file looks correct on disk. What is the most likely composition reason?

A layer’s opinions affect the composed plaza stage only when that layer contributes. If the parks gardener’s USDA file looks correct on disk but the edits never appear, the most likely reason is that the layer is muted or otherwise absent from the contributing LayerStack. Muting or excluding it prevents its authored values from reaching the composed result, regardless of whether the file contents are valid. Restore the layer’s contribution before rewriting plant attributes. The claim that USDA layers are read only as reference metadata in municipal projects is incorrect: USDA is a valid OpenUSD encoding, and its authored edits can contribute to a stage. The claim that LIVERPS always discards parks staff’s Local opinions is also incorrect; Local is strongest in the strength ladder, not discarded by default. Point instancing does not automatically delete gardener attribute edits on contributing layers: it affects how prototypes and instances share opinions, but does not generally mute a layer. Exam caveat: a wrong edit target, a stronger opposing opinion, or an inactive variant selection can also hide expected values, but when a correct file’s edits are absent from the composition, non-contribution is the key possibility to check. Practical check: inspect the plaza stage’s root LayerStack, verify that the gardener layer is present and unmuted, confirm it was the edit target for the missing edits, and recompose. If it contributes but Local opinions still lose, investigate LIVERPS conflicts; if it does not contribute, unmute or re-include it and retest.