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Changelog – Project SuperDex

All notable changes to this repository will be documented here.

[1.0.1]

This release expands Python support, improves simulation performance, and adds new tools for recording episodes, authoring robot scenes, and processing CAD.

What's New

  • Python 3.13 and 3.14 support. Native wheels now use the CPython stable ABI and support standard CPython 3.12+. The nanobind port preserves the Python API and enables parallel calls in free-threaded CPython source builds.
  • Experimental sleeping islands. Settled islands can skip simulation work and wake when affected by scene changes. This is a work-in-progress. Enable it through experimental::SleepParams. Off by default.
  • Experimental independent contact skins. Rods, shells, and soft bodies can use contact meshes independently of their simulation and visual meshes. New contact-skin queries expose deformed positions and normals.
  • More robust shells. A new membrane-collapse barrier guards against instability under strong in-plane compression, eliminating solution explosions in many scenarios.
  • More control over contact. Override contact parameters for specific actor pairs in code or prefabs. Skinned articulations can also list links whose rigid contact is replaced by skin contact through ArticulatedSkinParams::nonCollidingLinks.
  • Actor preconditioner overrides. Select a supported preconditioner for each actor with experimental::SetActorPreconditionerType (Python: experimental.set_actor_preconditioner_type) when using PreconditionerType::PerActor.
  • Prefab pose snapshots. Save and restore soft deformation and articulated joint poses with ExportParams::exportCurrentPose (export_current_pose). This is opt-in; velocities are not included.
  • Episode recording for source builds. The new superdex.recorder API writes transactional Rerun episodes with rigid and articulated state, robot controllers, step durations, body parameters, and optional contact forces. EpisodeReader supports selective frame reads. Robot and keypoint shadows add visualization without changing the simulation.
  • Skinned bots in Studio. Render and edit bot skins, attach skins to composed bots, drag a skin through its nearest link, and export skinned GLB meshes and simulation prefabs. A measurement tool measures vertices, triangles, and facets, including while simulation is paused.
  • Studio automation. Run processing pipelines without a window using --process, redirect exports with --out, and explicitly allow conflicting exports with --override. Capture repeatable screenshots with --screenshot, camera and framing controls, and a chosen output size. Screenshots require a display or Xvfb.
  • Better CAD workflows. Control STEP mesh density by CAD face color and preview models in their authored colors. Mesh exports have improved UV packing. The CAD exporter has a DPI-aware UI, restored SolidWorks part export, per-link meshing overrides, and an NX installer.
  • Filament rendering for SuperDex Lab. Lab now uses the Filament-based viewer with automatic server launch, per-actor colors, ground planes, grids, and working camera controls. Camera roll and background-color issues are fixed.
  • New robot assets. Added skinned Wuji hand variants, FR3/Wuji and FR3/DG5F combinations, and DG5F/Seed mounting-adapter CAD. Wuji collisions and joints and the Robotiq 2F-85 gripper have updated tuning. Left-hand Wuji kinematics, visual meshes, and colliders have corrected mirroring.
  • Debugger profiling. A new profiler panel displays per-step timings and statistics. If you don't see it docked at the bottom, then use the "Reset Layout" option in the menu.
  • Debugger debug-draw. Enable various debug draw options to visualize contacts, forces, bounds, and more. Controlled through the properties panel.
  • Native neural inference. Native MLPs now support SiLU activation.

Performance

  • Various optimizations resulting in up to 2X overall performance improvement, depending on the scene and settings.
  • Soft and shell actors use closed-form element mass and store fewer redundant matrices and sparsity patterns, reducing assembly work, memory use, and scene creation time.
  • Reduced contact work with sphere-tree culling, sort-and-sweep broadphase, cached collider bounds, and specialized point-cloud and GridSDF queries.
  • Reworked skinned contact assembly around sparse bone maps, Jacobian-free sums, and batched SIMD reductions. Articulated Hessians use compact link Jacobians and symmetric assembly.
  • Reduced PCG and AMG synchronization, improved per-actor preconditioner scheduling, and removed redundant solver setup, temporary storage, and copies.
  • Nonlinear solver skips redundant retries.
  • Expanded opt-in AVX-512 support. AVX-512 remains disabled by default because it requires a compatible CPU and it isn't always faster. This is expected to improve in future versions. You're welcome to try it out now by building with CMake flag -DMOCHI_USE_AVX512=ON.
  • Improved SIMD processing, small-matrix operations, eigensolvers, and FEM assembly.
  • Reduced FEM and ECS memory overhead and eliminated unnecessary copies in NumPy mesh conversion, and viewer frame reception. Shared-library calls also have less dynamic-linking overhead. Renderer capture can reuse caller-owned frame buffers, and rigid and articulated boundary-condition updates use fewer temporary allocations.

Fixes

  • Articulation pose and velocity resets now update link, soft-skin, and blended state consistently. Rods now support SetZeroDisplacementsAndVelocities.
  • Revolute joint velocities now report exact angle rates at large rotations per step. Changing a body's center of mass preserves its root transform, and inertia validation accepts valid rotated slender bodies.
  • Mass and density queries now work on static articulated links. Setting density on shapeless links no longer produces NaN inertia.
  • Fixed missed contacts after point-cloud threshold changes, incorrect rod contact bounds, and oversized sphere colliders on non-cubic meshes. SDF distance queries report correct world positions for recentered soft actors.
  • Fixed slow drift of resting rigid actors far from the world origin, incorrect forces and normals against rotated soft colliders, and contact torques on reduced-order soft colliders.
  • Fixed crashes and incorrect force reporting for partitioned skinned contacts.
  • Failed IK target replacement and solver creation preserve existing targets and scenes. Pose-controller parameter updates are all-or-nothing. IK no longer produces NaN actuator energy from an infinite time step or constraint damping.
  • Newton-Euler mass and Coriolis terms no longer include contact forces.
  • PsdProjectionMode::Never is now honored on Newton retries. Non-finite line-search values are checked consistently in optimized builds.
  • Corrected triangle quadrature weights and Smith neo-Hookean PSD projection near rest states.
  • Partial-rotation boundary conditions return an error instead of triggering an assertion in debug builds.
  • Python handles now work as dictionary keys and set members.
  • Restoring state now refreshes debugger visual meshes. Static actors support visual-node queries, and the debugger handles playback-time resets safely.
  • Prefab reload preserves in-memory nested prefabs. Studio refreshes stale models, handles inaccessible paths without crashing, and avoids invalid link selections.
  • Source and wheel builds respect compiler selection. CMake builds handle jemalloc compatibility correctly, and Android builds without FP16 arithmetic use a supported fallback. CUDA sparse solver builds support cuDSS 0.8.

API Changes

  • Legacy viewer dependency: Polyscope is now optional. Install polyscope>=2.5.0,<2.6 separately if you use the legacy viewer. This range has no Python 3.14 wheels.
  • Equality comparisons: constraint and prefab comparisons now include derived fields such as actor names and translations. Compare selected fields explicitly if your code relied on the previous partial comparison. Defaulted C++ prefab equality operators require C++20.
  • Prefab export: replace prefab::ExportSceneExcluding with ExportScene and ExportParams::excludeActors. In Python, use export_scene with ExportParams(exclude_actors=...). Existing exports without options still work.
  • Newton fallback: removed gradientDescentFallback (Python: gradient_descent_fallback) from the solver configuration. Default behavior is unchanged.
  • Computed inertia: rigid bodies and articulated links using P1Q1 boundary elements now get exact mesh-derived inertia.
  • Python precision names: use fp32 and fp64 in configuration and precision comparisons. PRECISION_NAME now returns those names. Existing double environment aliases and the double source-build extra remain accepted.
  • Rod contact: replace useVisualMeshContact with useContactSkin and visualMeshContactElementType with contactSkinElementType. In Python, use use_contact_skin and contact_skin_element_type. Move contact geometry and its skinning data into ModelData::contactSkinMesh (contact_skin_mesh).
  • Contact-skin access: surface-mesh getters no longer return deformable contact skins. Use GetShapeContactSkinMesh or Actor::GetContactSkinMesh. Register ContactSkinNodePositions and ContactSkinNodeNormals for deformed data, then read the corresponding contact-skin position and normal getters.
  • Lab environments: import superdex.lab.gym and construct registered environments with gymnasium.make, for example gymnasium.make("superdex_gym/CartPole-v0", cfg={}). Update discovery-based environment names in scripts, training recipes, and checkpoint configuration to the registered superdex_gym/<Name>-v0 IDs.
  • Lab rendering: remove renderer_backend, render_coordinate_system, and the sample runner's --renderer option. Configure mochi_renderer_cfg instead. Public builds do not include the new interactive render_mode="human" viewer. Use render_mode="rgb_array" or None. Pass up_dir explicitly to camera-view calls if your observations depend on the previous orientation.
  • Shell material defaults: membraneCollapseBarrierScale now defaults to 1e-3. Set it to 0 to retain the previous plain StVK membrane response.
  • Mesh authoring: remove nodes that no element references before creating soft or shell actors, articulated skins, or blended skins. Contact-skin models also require skinning data at shape creation. Blended vertices must have matching rest coordinates and skinning transforms in the articulated and nested-soft meshes. Previously accepted invalid assets can now return errors. Runtime SDF collider creation also rejects empty meshes, oversized grids, and unusable cell spacing. Check mesh padding and grid resolution when actor creation returns an SDF error.
  • Solver limits: iterative solvers reject maxIter = 0. Use the automatic limit or a positive value. The default maximum is now 500 rather than 1000. Set LinearSolverParams::maxIter explicitly if you need the previous limit.
  • Native linking: shared Physics libraries no longer export mochi_core implementation symbols. Link mochi_core directly if your application uses those symbols. Replace MOCHI_PMR_USES_JEMALLOC with MOCHI_PMR_ENABLE_JEMALLOC_COMPATIBILITY in custom build configuration.
  • Experimental scene recording: HDF5 scene recording has moved to the experimental API. It will probably be removed in the future. All new recording efforts are directed toward SuperDex Recorder (superdex.recorder), described above.

[2026-08-24]

  • Initial release.