Apologies if this is redundant, I thought I saw this topic started somewhere but I can't find it.

Will Karma eventually exist outside of the stage context?

I understand the power/flexibility of that workflow for bigger productions but I tend to work on shots alone.

There's “USD Render” in the out context but it has to reference a LOP, correct?

It'd be nice if there was a Karma ROP like we get with Mantra, Redshift, or 3Delight.

Or is the future of rendering in Houdini going to be solely in LOPs?

The3DStig
Will Karma eventually exist outside of the stage context?

No, impossible.

The3DStig
There's “USD Render” in the out context but it has to reference a LOP, correct?

Correct, or it can reference a USD file on disk.

The3DStig
It'd be nice if there was a Karma ROP like we get with Mantra, Redshift, or 3Delight.

The USD Render node is inside the Karma lop, and can be fetched with a fetch ROP for use in a dependency graph. There also TOP nodes for rendering USD within a TOP dependency network.

Interesting, thanks!
So we should all get used to rendering out via the stage context?

The3DStig
So we should all get used to rendering out via the stage context?

In the long run: yes.