Skip to content

Document that URDF files can be loaded into existing recording #12286

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Merged
MichaelGrupp merged 2 commits into from
Dec 19, 2025
Merged

Document that URDF files can be loaded into existing recording #12286

Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
2 commits
Select commit Hold shift + click to select a range
c143015
Document that URDF files can be loaded into existing recording
MichaelGrupp Dec 19, 2025
e3c288e
Explain TF error resolution
MichaelGrupp Dec 19, 2025
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
14 changes: 14 additions & 0 deletions docs/content/howto/urdf.md
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -33,6 +33,20 @@ snippet: howto/load_urdf

For similar code in Rust, we have a full example [here](github.com/rerun-io/rerun/tree/main/examples/rust/animated_urdf).

## Load URDF into an existing recording

If you already have a recording with transforms loaded in Rerun and want to add an URDF to it, you can do so via drag-and-drop or the menu ("Import into current recording").

In this video, we load an ROS 2 `.mcap` file with TF messages that automatically get translated into Rerun `Transform3D`.
As indicated by the errors displayed in the viewer, there are some connections missing in the transform tree of this example MCAP.
In our case, these missing transforms are static links that are stored in URDF models separate from the MCAP file.

To add them, we can simply drag the corresponding URDF files into the viewer where we have loaded the MCAP:

<video width="100%" autoplay loop muted controls>
<source src="https://static.rerun.io/69e08d9dcaed77f5f93190ffb9ccf75376c7d1c4_urdf_drag_and_drop.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
</video>

## References

* [🐍 Python `log_file_from_path`](https://ref.rerun.io/docs/python/stable/common/logging_functions/#rerun.log_file_from_path)
Expand Down