Tutorial 6: Advanced Rendering#

Objective: Learn how to use different rendering techniques for varying quality/performance trade-offs.

What you’ll learn:

  • Rasterization vs Ray Tracing vs Path Tracing

  • Configuring render modes in MetaSim

  • When to use each rendering technique

Prerequisites: Completed Tutorial 5: Hybrid Simulation

Estimated time: 20 minutes


MetaSim supports multiple rendering techniques through Isaac Sim’s rendering backend. Choose based on your quality vs performance requirements.

Technique

Quality

Speed

Use Case

Rasterization

Good

Fast

Training, real-time

Ray Tracing

Great

Medium

Validation, demos

Path Tracing

Best

Slow

Final renders, sim2real

Running the Tutorial#

python get_started/6_advanced_rendering.py  --render.mode=[rasterization|raytracing|pathtracing]

you can also render in the headless mode by adding --headless flag. By using this, there will be no window popping up and the rendering will also be faster.

By running the above command, you will simulate a hybrid system and it will automatically record a video. Here we demonstrate how to use one simulator for physics simulation and another simulator for rendering.

Examples#

Ray Tracing#

python get_started/6_advanced_rendering.py  --render.mode=raytracing

Path Tracing#

python get_started/6_advanced_rendering.py  --render.mode=pathtracing

You will get the following images:#

Ray Tracing

Path Tracing

Ray Tracing

Path Tracing