[ooctipus]

Summary

Move Newton deformable assets into isaaclab_newton, alongside articulations and rigid objects:

1. Import declared geometry and materials into source builders.
2. Compose and replicate those builders through the common native cloning path.
3. Initialize assets by selecting particle ranges from the completed backend; publish visual geometry through SDP.

Render-only deformable meshes are built once per prototype, not rebuilt for every destination after cloning.

• Remove the contrib geometry registry, per-world deformable construction hooks, and unused interpolation wrappers.
• Record MPM particle ranges and cable shape indices during native copying instead of reconstructing them in assets.
• Use OVPhysX's native body metadata for SDP and avoid loading GPU PhysX scenes twice. Fabric owns its rendering bindings.
• Preserve cloth rest angles, rotated tetrahedral rest frames, visual materials, and sensor-selected bodies without temporarily renaming source builders.

Against develop: 1,295 fewer production lines and 549 fewer test lines.

Migration

Breaking: isaaclab_contrib.deformable is removed. For Newton-specific imports, use:

from isaaclab_newton.assets import DeformableObject, DeformableObjectData

The backend-neutral isaaclab.assets.DeformableObject and DeformableObjectCfg APIs are unchanged.

The local add_deformable_from_usd importer remains until the pinned Newton provides material-import and selection-metadata parity. Removal conditions are documented beside it; related issue: #6208.

Benchmarks

Matched develop → this PR, on an RTX 5090 (reserved GPU 1). One fresh-process sample per revision and workload, with warm caches; 50 excluded warmup steps followed by 200 measured steps, seed 42, no interactive visualizer. Every run completed.

Workload	Physics → renderer	Envs	Startup [s], develop → PR	Throughput [env-steps/s], develop → PR
Franka Cloth Camera	PhysX → Newton	4,095	347.65 → 65.90	17,941 → 20,772
Franka Soft Camera	PhysX → Newton	4,095	936.61 → 67.13	22,497 → 29,048
Franka Cloth Camera	Newton MJWarp + VBD → Newton	4,096	351.43 → 26.50	7,481 → 7,422
Franka Soft Camera	Newton MJWarp + VBD → Newton	4,096	255.91 → 28.87	20,278 → 19,913
Franka Cable Camera	Newton MJWarp + VBD → Newton	4,096	31.34 → 28.86	64,117 → 64,010
UR10 Particle Push (MPM)	Newton MJWarp + MPM → none	64	11.29 → 10.94	2,410 → 2,472

Cloth and soft-body startup improved substantially. Cable showed a smaller startup saving; MPM was effectively neutral. Shared-Newton camera throughput changed by −0.2% to −1.8%, and MPM by +2.6%; these small single-pair differences do not establish a runtime change. PhysX → Newton camera throughput improved by 15.8% for cloth and 29.1% for soft bodies in this sample.

The main startup saving comes from importing deformable meshes once and using native replication, replacing repeated per-destination mesh construction. PhysX → Newton scene construction alone fell from 275.25 → 11.42 s for cloth and 864.77 → 11.45 s for soft bodies. The PR also removes the second native GPU PhysX load. For PhysX → Newton, deformable render geometry now receives destination-world IDs instead of being appended to the shared world, allowing Newton's triangle-mesh partitioning to use those IDs.

All camera cases use 128×128 RGB images. PhysX uses 4,095 environments to stay below the tested native deformable limit; MPM uses its maintained 64-environment task configuration, not a 4,096-environment comparison. Startup is python_imports + task_config + app_launch + env_creation; it excludes the subsequent reset, first step, rollout, and shutdown. Throughput counts environment transitions, not GPU render calls.

Exact revisions, dependencies, and reproduction

• Develop: 0d607262c14de6a4baea30b72631a2ecc192b3aa.
• PR merge candidate: baa2764b20f660589b5055cb2778683f4870bdac, combining that same develop commit with PR head f528106c842c8275598474930675d4ffcb05cccd.
• Same dependency environment and Isaac Sim build: Newton 1.6.0, Warp 1.17.0, MuJoCo/MJWarp 3.12.0, PyTorch 2.12.0+cu130. CPU: Threadripper PRO 7965WX. Unrelated jobs ran on GPU 0 of the shared host.
• Small reset/step checks preceded the full-sized runs. Each full-sized pair ran develop first, then PR. No profiler was attached; the benchmark used its standard host_return environment-step timing.
• The benchmark's metadata recognizer does not currently name coupled Newton configurations. Both checkouts received the same metadata-only adjustment: add ("newton", "newton") after the MJWarp entry in benchmark/capture.py, and "newton" to PhysicsBackend in benchmark/schema.py. No task or solver setting was changed by this adjustment, and it is not part of this PR.

Run from each checkout using its source imports and the same dependencies:

bench() {
  PYTHONPATH="$(printf '%s:' "$PWD"/source/*)" \
  CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=1 OMP_NUM_THREADS=8 MKL_NUM_THREADS=8 \
  uv run --no-sync isaaclab -p -m isaaclab.benchmark.entrypoints.runtime \
    --task "$1" --num_envs "$2" --visualizer none --device cuda:0 \
    --seed 42 --warmup_steps 50 --num_steps 200 \
    --kit_args=--/renderer/multiGpu/enabled=false \
    --output_path /tmp/pr8021-benchmark "${@:3}"
}

for task in Isaac-Lift-Cloth-Franka-Camera Isaac-Lift-Soft-Franka-Camera; do
  bench "$task" 4095 physics=isaacsim_physx renderer=newton_renderer \
    env.sim.physics.gpu_found_lost_pairs_capacity=16777216
done

for task in Isaac-Lift-Cloth-Franka-Camera Isaac-Lift-Soft-Franka-Camera Isaac-Lift-Cable-Franka-Camera; do
  bench "$task" 4096 physics=newton_mjwarp_vbd_proxy renderer=newton_renderer
done

bench IsaacContrib-UR10-Particle-Push 64

Validation

• All 12 full-sized benchmark launches completed, each with 50 warmup and 200 measured steps, after small-workload validation on both revisions.
• Clone/import, SDP geometry, site, Newton deformable, and frame-transformer tests passed.
• All 44 PhysX rigid-object tests and eight focused cloner tests passed after the native-load fix. Its CPU/GPU regression test failed on GPU before the fix and passed on both afterward.
• The prototype-first regression failed before the fix and passed afterward, covering repeated instances, shared geometry, distinct visual topology, native world ownership, and translated/rotated placement.
• Formatting/lint checks and changelog validation passed.

Checklist

• Followed contribution guidelines and ran formatting checks
• Updated documentation and package changelog fragments
• Validated import, replication, runtime selection, and rendering
• Backport this pull request to the active release branch

[ooctipus]

run-ci

[greptile-apps]

Confidence Score: 5/5

[High risk] Moves deformable object implementation from contrib to core Newton package.

The PR appears safe to merge; no actionable regression was identified.

Summary

The PR moves Newton deformable assets, data, and kernels from contrib into Newton while retaining deprecated contrib class imports.

• VBD now registers the deformable builder callback directly and relies on Newton’s existing teardown.
• Existing deformable tests and documentation move or change to reflect Newton ownership.

Diagram

%%{init: {'theme': 'neutral'}}%%
flowchart LR
  A[Newton VBD manager] -->|registers builder callback| B[Deformable builder]
  C[Newton DeformableObject] -->|registers mesh entry| B
  B --> D[Newton particle model]
  E[Deprecated contrib class imports] --> C

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_{Reviews (1) · Last reviewed commit: "Move Newton deformable ownership out of ..."}

[isaaclab-review-bot]

Isaac Lab Review Bot

The Newton deformable implementation is moved from contrib into isaaclab_newton.assets.deformable_object, with VBD now registering its builder callback directly. The relocated asset and data paths preserve the existing implementation, while documented class imports remain available through deprecated contrib re-exports.

• Design and architecture: Ownership now aligns the deformable asset, buffers, kernels, and VBD lifecycle integration within the Newton package, removing Newton’s optional contrib dependency. The direct callback registration remains idempotent and teardown is delegated to the existing NewtonManager.clear() lifecycle.
• API: The documented DeformableObject and DeformableObjectData compatibility imports are preserved and migration guidance points users to isaaclab_newton.assets; the backend-independent asset API remains unchanged. The removed registry and hook-management functions were lower-level implementation constructs rather than documented public exports, and all repository consumers shown in the patch migrate with the ownership change.
• Implementation: The moved asset and data implementations retain the existing nodal-state, cache-invalidation, registration, and simulation-binding behavior, with imports adjusted to the Newton-local manager and kernels. The VBD manager now owns registry initialization and callback registration without the previous optional-import path.

No blocking issues. No inline issue met the actionable-evidence threshold; the assessment above records the review feedback.

Automated review; human maintainers own approval decisions.

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[isaaclab-bot]

Backported to release/3.0.0 as 478fac4.