Template for Isaac Lab Projects

Overview

This project/repository serves as a template for building projects or extensions based on Isaac Lab. It allows you to develop in an isolated environment, outside of the core Isaac Lab repository.

Key Features:

• Isolation Work outside the core Isaac Lab repository, ensuring that your development efforts remain self-contained.
• Flexibility This template is set up to allow your code to be run as an extension in Omniverse.

Keywords: extension, template, isaaclab

Installation

• Install Isaac Lab by following the installation guide. We recommend using the conda or uv installation as it simplifies calling Python scripts from the terminal.

• Clone or copy this project/repository separately from the Isaac Lab installation (i.e. outside the IsaacLab directory):

• Using a python interpreter that has Isaac Lab installed, install the library in editable mode using:

  # use 'PATH_TO_isaaclab.sh|bat -p' instead of 'python' if Isaac Lab is not installed in Python venv or conda
  python -m pip install -e source/JF_gym
  

• Verify that the extension is correctly installed by:

  • Listing the available tasks:

    Note: It the task name changes, it may be necessary to update the search pattern "Template-" (in the scripts/list_envs.py file) so that it can be listed.

    # use 'FULL_PATH_TO_isaaclab.sh|bat -p' instead of 'python' if Isaac Lab is not installed in Python venv or conda
    python scripts/list_envs.py

  • Running a task:

    # use 'FULL_PATH_TO_isaaclab.sh|bat -p' instead of 'python' if Isaac Lab is not installed in Python venv or conda
    python scripts/<RL_LIBRARY>/train.py --task=<TASK_NAME>

  • Running a task with dummy agents:

    These include dummy agents that output zero or random agents. They are useful to ensure that the environments are configured correctly.

    • Zero-action agent

      # use 'FULL_PATH_TO_isaaclab.sh|bat -p' instead of 'python' if Isaac Lab is not installed in Python venv or conda
      python scripts/zero_agent.py --task=<TASK_NAME>

    • Random-action agent

      # use 'FULL_PATH_TO_isaaclab.sh|bat -p' instead of 'python' if Isaac Lab is not installed in Python venv or conda
      python scripts/random_agent.py --task=<TASK_NAME>

Set up IDE (Optional)

To setup the IDE, please follow these instructions:

• Run VSCode Tasks, by pressing Ctrl+Shift+P, selecting Tasks: Run Task and running the setup_python_env in the drop down menu. When running this task, you will be prompted to add the absolute path to your Isaac Sim installation.

If everything executes correctly, it should create a file .python.env in the .vscode directory. The file contains the python paths to all the extensions provided by Isaac Sim and Omniverse. This helps in indexing all the python modules for intelligent suggestions while writing code.

Setup as Omniverse Extension (Optional)

We provide an example UI extension that will load upon enabling your extension defined in source/JF_gym/JF_gym/ui_extension_example.py.

To enable your extension, follow these steps:

1. Add the search path of this project/repository to the extension manager:

   • Navigate to the extension manager using Window -> Extensions.
   • Click on the Hamburger Icon, then go to Settings.
   • In the Extension Search Paths, enter the absolute path to the source directory of this project/repository.
   • If not already present, in the Extension Search Paths, enter the path that leads to Isaac Lab's extension directory directory (IsaacLab/source)
   • Click on the Hamburger Icon, then click Refresh.

2. Search and enable your extension:

   • Find your extension under the Third Party category.
   • Toggle it to enable your extension.

Code formatting

We have a pre-commit template to automatically format your code. To install pre-commit:

pip install pre-commit
pre-commit run --all-files

常见问题 (Troubleshooting)

Pylance 无法索引插件

如果 VSCode 的 Pylance 找不到你的代码，请将本项目的路径添加到 .vscode/settings.json：

{
    "python.analysis.extraPaths": [
        "<你的仓库路径>/source/RL"
    ]
}

Pylance 内存溢出/崩溃

如果 Isaac Sim 的库文件太多导致编辑器卡顿，可以在 .vscode/settings.json 中屏蔽不需要的模块：

"python.analysis.extraPaths": [
    // ... 保留需要的路径 ...
    // 注释掉不用的路径，例如：
    // "<isaac-sim路径>/extscache/omni.anim.*",
    // "<isaac-sim路径>/extscache/omni.graph.*"
]