MJCF/URDF first-class support in Newton? Format roadmap and best practices

[philzimmermann90]

Hi Newton team,

First of all, thank you for the excellent work and for open‑sourcing Newton — the project looks very promising for robotics research and engineering workflows！

I'd like to ask about the design rationale and roadmap for asset formats Newton intends to support. Specifically, will there be a first‑class, stable path to load and simulate MJCF/URDF assets directly (minimizing mandatory conversion to USD), especially when using the Mjc‑Warp solver?

The motivation comes from recurring issues I've been experiencing on IsaacSim/Lab:

1. MJCF/URDF tends to be more efficient and approachable for robot authoring; USD is great for large scene composition but can add overhead for articulations.
2. Converter/tooling fragility has been a pain point. Older converter bugs sometimes persist until schema/tool upgrades land, which can introduce new issues...
3. USD troubleshooting has a steep learning curve for new users. With MJCF/URDF, constructs like “joints/body/motor/geom” are familiar and explicit; with USD, we often need to understand schema layering, composition, and variantset nuances before a robot “just works.”

While asset format support may seem secondary to solvers or performance, it largely affects day‑to‑day authoring and iteration, and lowers the barrier for new users adopting this great simulator.

Thanks again for leading this effort — any thoughts or pointers to docs/discussions on the format roadmap would be greatly appreciated.

[momo-van]

Newton provides various ways to ingest assets including USD, MJCF, and URDF. You can also build the model manually through the Model Builder API.

[philzimmermann90]

thanks for your reply!