[Question] Opacity of Spawned Entities

[YZhang001]

Hello, I was following the tutorial on Orbit about the differential IK controller (Link)

For my application I need to visualize several non-physical entities in the scene, such as spheres on a table or markers.

For the non-physical spheres, I tried to spawn them as follows in the class TableTopSceneCfg(InteractiveSceneCfg) (line 60 of orbit/source/standalone/tutorials/05_controllers/run_diff_ik.py):

    sphere_1 = AssetBaseCfg(
            prim_path="{ENV_REGEX_NS}/Pose_Sphere_" + str(1),
            spawn=sim_utils.UsdFileCfg(usd_path=f"{ISAAC_NUCLEUS_DIR}/Props/Shapes/sphere.usd", 
                scale=(0.1, 0.1, 0.1),
            init_state=AssetBaseCfg.InitialStateCfg(pos=(0.4, -0.2, 0.0)))

and got spheres as shown in the picture, with a default color and default opacity:

My question is whether there is a way for Orbit where I could spawn such a sphere with any color & opacity as needed, so that the sphere can be seen through and the scene/objects inside the sphere become visible.

I found that it is possible to create a custom marker with customized opacity similar to the ones in /orbit/source/extensions/omni.isaac.orbit/omni/isaac/orbit/markers/config/__init__.py by setting the opacity of their sim_utils.PreviewSurfaceCfg config (/orbit/source/extensions/omni.isaac.orbit/omni/isaac/orbit/sim/spawners/materials/visual_materials_cfg.py); however, for the marker setting, the opacity doesn't make the markers transparent, but "only affects the surface's appearance during interactive rendering."

As a further question, I saw from the Isaac Sim 2023.1.1 release note that Franka Research 3 (FR3) manipulator has been added as a new robot. I'd like to kindly ask whether FR3 will also be added to Orbit later, because I didn't find it under the {ISAAC_ORBIT_NUCLEUS_DIR}/Robots/ path.

Thank you!

[Mayankm96]

Does setting the visual material as glass solves the problem for you?

Reference: https://isaac-orbit.github.io/orbit/source/api/orbit/omni.isaac.orbit.sim.spawners.html#omni.isaac.orbit.sim.spawners.materials.GlassMdlCfg