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material-override

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Tune PBR metallic / roughness on URDF visual meshes without re-exporting DAE — author an inline `<material_override>` element inside any `<visual>`, and let the engine's URDF→USD pipeline patch the converter's defaults post-conversion. Useful for sim-to-real visual fidelity (DAE materials round-trip poorly; Isaac Sim's importer lands every embedded material at roughness=0.5, metallic=0.0 by default). Trigger: When the user asks to "tune material", "change roughness / metallic", "make the gripper shinier", "fix dull PBR", "override material", "PBR override", or any time the simulator looks washed out after a URDF→USD import.

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How to use this skill

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When to Use

  • Robot or asset visual meshes import with washed-out / flat shading after the URDF→USD converter runs.
  • User wants to A/B PBR values without re-exporting DAE meshes from Blender / Maya.
  • Polishing a robot for sim-to-real visual transfer.
  • Author of a new URDF (see add-robot skill) wants the meshes to look right without round-tripping DAE materials.

Do not use for:

  • Replacing albedo / textures → must be done in the DAE export.
  • Per-prim material at runtime → that's a runtime USD edit, not the <material_override> element.
  • Adding a brand-new material — only patches metallic / roughness on the embedded one.

Critical Patterns

  1. Author inside <visual>, not on the link. The override auto-scopes to exactly the mesh it sits under. A link with N <visual> elements just gets N independent overrides.
  2. urdfdom / RSP / MoveIt / Isaac's converter all ignore it. assemble_robot.py strips the element from the URDF it feeds the converter, then re-applies the values to the converted USD via _parse_material_override_blocks / _apply_material_overrides.
  3. Only roughness and metallic are exposed. Other UsdPreviewSurface inputs (specular, opacity, IOR) are not on the contract.
  4. Range 0..1. Outside that range the importer warns and clamps.
  5. No attributes needed. Scoping is positional. Don't try to target a sibling visual by name — author one override per visual.

Schema

<visual>
  <origin xyz="0 0 0" rpy="0 0 0"/>
  <geometry>
    <mesh filename="package://.../base_link.dae"/>
  </geometry>
  <material_override>
    <roughness>0.45</roughness>
    <metallic>0.85</metallic>
  </material_override>
</visual>

Either child is optional — author only what you need. Default for an absent child is "leave as the converter wrote it" (typically 0.5 / 0.0 for DAE imports).

PBR cheat-sheet

LookroughnessmetallicNotes
Brushed steel0.400.95Most arm shells
Anodised aluminium0.550.30UR-style structural
Polished chrome0.051.00Decorative trims, mirror parts
Matte plastic0.700.00Cable guards, end-stops
Rubber pads0.850.00Soft contact surfaces
Anodised gold (gripper bushings)0.300.90Highlights

These are starting points; A/B against a photograph of the real robot if you have one.

Workflow

Step 1 — Find the visual you want to tune

# Locate the URDF / xacro under genie_sim_robot_model
grep -nR "<visual>" source/geniesim_ros/src/ros_ws/src/genie_sim_robot_model/robots/ | head

Step 2 — Add the override

Open the xacro, drop <material_override> into the <visual> block. Existing reference: aloha arm xacro carries an override on every visual:

<visual>
  <origin xyz="0 0 0" rpy="0 0 0" />
  <geometry>
    <mesh filename="${mesh_dir}/base_link.dae" />
  </geometry>
  <material_override><roughness>0.45</roughness><metallic>0.85</metallic></material_override>
</visual>

Step 3 — Rebuild the workspace

geniesim ros build dev && source devel/setup.bash

Step 4 — Force a USD regenerate

The robot USD is cache-gated by manifest.json. Bust the cache:

rm -rf assets/scenes/<scene>/
# OR pass at launch:
ros2 launch genie_sim_bringup app.launch.py … always_regenerate_robot_usd:=true

Step 5 — Launch and inspect

ros2 launch genie_sim_bringup app.launch.py \
  scene:=<scene> \
  launcher_config:=launcher_ovrtx_isaac_physx \
  headless:=false   # local workstation with a screen; flip to true on a remote/headless host

In the OVRtx viewport, compare against the unmodified baseline. Iterate values, rebuild, re-launch.

Step 6 — Verify the converted USD

grep -n "roughness\|metallic" assets/scenes/<scene>/robot/robot.usda | head

You should see the patched values on the relevant material prims.

Notes

  • assemble_robot.py walks each <visual> in author order; if a visual has multiple meshes (rare in our robots), the override applies to every embedded material of that visual.
  • The override is stripped from the URDF before it reaches the converter, so MoveIt / RSP / urdfdom never see it. They'll happily consume the same xacro.
  • For brand-new materials (no DAE-embedded source), prefer authoring a real <material> block — material_override is patch-only.
  • Material is rendered by OVRtx + Isaac Sim. The Newton GL viewer uses simple shading and won't reflect roughness / metallic — use OVRtx for visual QA.

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