Rig/Animation Question: Adding a sublayer on top of a static model

[can-adrian]

hi!

I'm trying to set up a workflow where with a static usdc geometry (a car in this example). In the rig I remove the shape nodes of any rigid transforming geometry, (leaving geometry that deforms), and I would like to layer this on top of my static geo so that everything composes correctly downstream in an efficient way.

My empty transforms however are overriding the layer below, is there a way to override or layer in the way I describe above? I played around a bit with the merge transformation and shapes options a bit but it was it behaved a bit strangely.

This is using only the stage manager in maya, I'm gonna dig around a bit in the API as well but I thought I would ask and see if anyone had any thoughts.