CHANGELOG.md

Changelog

[Unreleased]

[1.5.1] - 2026-08-27

Fixed

• Reset masked ControllerNeuralLSTM hidden and cell state without in-place writes. Network outputs are produced under torch.inference_mode(), so a partial reset previously raised RuntimeError: Inplace update to inference tensor outside InferenceMode is not allowed. (#3923)
• Index Torch neural controller targets with the supplied target_pos_indices. ControllerNeuralMLP and ControllerNeuralLSTM previously selected between position and sequential indices by Python object identity, which produced wrong position errors whenever the target and position layouts differ, such as DOF-layout targets on a floating-base robot. (#3923)
• Limit the usd-exchange dependency to versions below 3 for aarch64 systems. (#3996)
• Keep ViewerGL depth, shading, and shadows stable for very large meshes when the camera moves. (#3977)
• Resolve deep heightfield contacts against the cell's physical surface instead of the volume the cell is extruded into, which reported about a metre of penetration with a normal pointing into the terrain once a collider's center passed below the surface.

[1.5.0] - 2026-08-11

Added

• Import MJCF mesh assets authored with inline vertex, face, normal, and texture-coordinate data.
• Break the viewer's shape count down into visual and collision shapes. The two are listed under Shapes in the stats overlay and need not sum to the total, since a shape can be both.
• Add selection of the shapes included in model shape BVHs through Model.bvh_build_shapes(shape_flags=...) and ModelBuilder.default_bvh_cfg.shape_flags, e.g. ShapeFlags.VISIBLE | ShapeFlags.COLLIDE_SHAPES to also include collision shapes.
• Add a damping parameter to ModelBuilder.add_joint_ball() that applies passive angular damping to all three ball-joint DOFs; when omitted, ModelBuilder.default_joint_cfg.damping applies.
• Add per-world xforms argument to ModelBuilder.replicate() for batching explicitly positioned worlds.
• Add cubic and triplanar SensorTiledCamera texture projection modes for shapes without authored UVs.
• Add fullscreen to ViewerGL.log_image() to display a logged image, such as a sensor output texture, as the main viewer surface for a frame while keeping the UI available.
• Import USD deformable bodies in ModelBuilder.add_usd() (experimental; based on the proposed AOUSD Deformable Body Physics schema). Curves become cables (capsule bodies joined by cable joints, each cable wrapped in its own articulation), meshes become cloth (FEM triangles with bending edges), and tet meshes become soft bodies. Bound deformable materials supply thickness, stiffness, and density, and the proposal's mass precedence (per-point physics:masses, then body mass/density, then material density) is honored. Each imported deformable's element ranges and authored material attributes are returned by prim path when the experimental add_usd(..., return_deformable_results=True) option is passed; the returned maps are build-time snapshots (not live selections), and the default return shape carries no deformable entries. Collision participation follows PhysicsCollisionAPI / physics:collisionEnabled: cables without an enabled collider import without collision, while cloth and volume deformables warn that particle collision cannot be disabled yet. Standard physics:filteredPairs pairs involving a cable expand to its segment shapes; pairs naming a cloth or volume deformable warn and are not lowered. Disabled or kinematic deformables and malformed topology warn and are skipped. Cable and cloth material attributes are returned as authored in path_cable_attrs / path_cloth_attrs, so solvers with richer cable or cloth models can rebuild from the import. See the USD parsing documentation for the supported subset and limitations.
• Import AOUSD proposal PhysicsAttachment prims for cables in ModelBuilder.add_usd(). Cable point / segment sites with an xform target become hard ball joints, returned in path_attachment_map (with return_deformable_results=True); cloth/volume attachment sites warn and are kept in path_attachment_attrs. A hard, coincident point->point attachment between two cables welds them into one rod graph; a springy or non-coincident junction warns and is kept as data instead of welded.
• Import AOUSD proposal PhysicsElementCollisionFilter prims in ModelBuilder.add_usd(): collisions between the paired element groups of src0 and src1 are filtered (group counts pair element-wise; a count of 0 or an empty counts array selects all elements). Sources resolve to imported cables, rigid bodies, or collider prims; cloth/volume element sources warn and are skipped.
• Add scalar value-based OpenCV, F-theta, and Kannala-Brandt fisheye camera ray helpers to SensorTiledCamera.utils, plus pinhole aperture/focal-length parameters, compute_camera_transforms_usd(), compute_camera_rays_usd_pinhole(), and optional preallocated ray output writes.
• Import authored MPM particle sets from UsdGeom.Points carrying the generic NewtonParticleAPI and owned by a NewtonMPMSceneAPI scene, including SI unit and world-transform conversion, density- and width-derived masses, whole-prim and point-GeomSubset physics material bindings, per-prim particle ranges, and SolverImplicitMPM.Config.create_from_usd() scene configuration. Accept resolved materials carrying NewtonMPMMaterialAPI, PhysicsMaterialAPI, or PhysicsVolumeDeformableMaterialAPI; standard physics:youngsModulus and physics:poissonsRatio provide elasticity. Unrelated scenes and particle systems are ignored, while imported MPM Points must share one owner; unbound particle sets use Newton's registered material defaults and the builder's default density.
• Import authored MPM particle sets from UsdGeom.Points carrying the generic NewtonParticleAPI and owned by a NewtonMPMSceneAPI scene, including SI unit and world-transform conversion, density- and width-derived masses, whole-prim and point-GeomSubset physics material bindings, per-prim particle ranges, and SolverImplicitMPM.Config.create_from_usd() scene configuration. Accept resolved materials carrying NewtonMPMMaterialAPI, PhysicsMaterialAPI, or PhysicsVolumeDeformableMaterialAPI; standard physics:youngsModulus and physics:poissonsRatio provide elasticity, absolute MPM damping is normalized against Young's modulus for the current solver, and initial plastic volume strain seeds resettable particle state. Unrelated scenes and particle systems are ignored, while imported MPM Points must share one owner; unbound particle sets use Newton's registered material defaults and the builder's default density.
• Import authored MPM simulation geometry from UsdGeom.Points carrying NewtonPointsDeformableSimAPI and governed by PhysicsDeformableBodyAPI. The importer handles world transforms and stage units; standard per-point, body-total, and density-derived mass precedence; whole-prim and point-GeomSubset materials; per-prim particle ranges; and SolverImplicitMPM.Config.create_from_usd() scene configuration. NewtonMPMMaterialAPI supplies MPM elasticity and constitutive properties, including resettable initial plastic volume strain.
• Add cubic and triplanar SensorTiledCamera texture projection modes for shapes without authored UVs.
• Add CUDA-graph-capturable rebuildable sparse grids to SolverImplicitMPM when max_active_cell_count is positive, with optional max_leaf_node_count, max_lower_node_count, and max_upper_node_count hierarchy capacities.
• Add opt-in isolated multi-world implicit MPM with capacity-bounded rebuildable sparse grids, selective world resets, outer graph capture, and asynchronous overflow reporting through SolverImplicitMPM.check_sparse_grid_rebuild_status(); legacy shared topology remains the default.
• Add contact examples for Newton's cradle, a balance bird, and a domino spiral
• Document geometry-pair contact behavior and clarify that MuJoCo Warp currently produces a single contact for cylinder--box pairs even with MultiCCD enabled.
• Add ViewerUSD(points_as_spheres=...) to render log_points particles as a UsdGeom.PointInstancer of sphere prototypes; enabled by default (opt out with points_as_spheres=False for flat UsdGeom.Points splats)
• Add experimental newton.controllers module with ControllerBase base class, ControllerJointImpedance, and ControllerJointImpedanceModelFree for GPU-accelerated, vectorized joint-space impedance control.
• Add list-of-pattern and explicit-index selectors to ArticulationView.
• Add full-surface (edge/face) rigid-soft contacts to SolverVBD proxy-body coupling under SolverCoupledProxy through shared or proxy-local collision pipelines. Proxy-particle coupling rejects full-surface contacts.
• Add newton[onnx] for ONNX policy inference through Warp-NN; ControllerNeuralMLP, ControllerNeuralLSTM, and RL policy examples can run exported .onnx policies without requiring PyTorch for ONNX execution.
• Add three VBD contact examples — vbd_rigid_rigid_contact, vbd_soft_rigid_contact, and vbd_soft_rigid_mix_contact — demonstrating rigid-rigid, soft (particle-rigid), and mixed cloth-bag contacts
• Add masked rigid-body reset support to SolverVBD. (#3256)
• Add Mesh.invalidate_cache() to drop cached derived data (hash, edges, finalized Warp meshes) after in-place modification of Mesh.vertices or Mesh.indices; reassigning those properties invalidates automatically.
• Add Heightfield.create_from_mesh() and newton.utils.rasterize_mesh_to_heightfield() to build a heightfield collider by ray-casting a wp.Mesh, replacing a large static terrain mesh with an equivalent heightfield.
• Add read-only Contacts.contact_matching_mode metadata reporting whether the CollisionPipeline that produced or last filled the buffer used "disabled", "latest", or "sticky" contact matching.
• Add a "Show Ground" visualization toggle (ViewerBase.show_ground, default on) to hide or show ground-plane shapes in the viewer.
• Add opt-in DVI forward dynamics to SolverKamino through SolverKamino.Config(dynamics_solver="dvi"), with sparse and dense execution, DVI-specific convergence diagnostics, warm-starting, bounded contact-recovery controls, and RCM-reordered bilateral factorization with reusable ordering and panel-parallel numeric factorization for large systems. PADMM remains the default. (#3570, #3613)
• Add fk_actuation_flags to SolverKamino.register_custom_attributes() for selecting joint actuation types in forward-kinematics workflows. (#3338)
• Add D6 gimbal/Euler joint support to SolverKamino, including conversion, limits, Jacobians, reset, and forward-kinematics handling. (#3717)
• Return the selected physics_scene_path from ModelBuilder.add_usd() and add newton.usd.get_physics_scenes() to retrieve every physics scene in parser order.
• Warn in ModelBuilder.add_usd() when a rigid body prim has a mirrored (negative-determinant) world transform. Improper transforms have no unique rotation decomposition, so imported body and joint frames can acquire a spurious constant rotation (common with mirror-scaled CAD exports); the warning recommends baking the reflection into the mesh geometry before import.
• Add dedicated gravity for global world -1 while preserving the single-entry Model.gravity array for implicit single-world models and local-only array updates through Model.set_gravity(). (#3724; fixes #3723)
• Add a sign_method argument to Mesh.build_sdf() and SDF.create_from_mesh() with "auto", "parity", "winding", and "normal" (angle-weighted pseudo-normal) strategies. Automatic runtime mesh queries use parity for watertight meshes and pseudo-normals for non-watertight meshes, while SDFs baked during model finalization use winding numbers. (#3403; fixes #3242)
• Add opt-in MuJoCo Warp sleeping support to SolverMuJoCo with MJCF sleep configuration, initial tree policies, sleep_tolerance, compact nvmax storage, and a launchable mujoco_sleeping example. (#3731; fixes #3725)
• Add forward_depth_image output support to SensorTiledCamera.update() and SensorTiledCamera.utils.create_forward_depth_image_output() for native forward-depth rendering without post-processing depth_image.
• Add a single-kernel sparse fused Conjugate Residual linear solver for the Kamino PADMM solver (linear_solver_type="CRF"): a matrix-free Delassus solve that runs the full CR iteration in one Warp kernel per world, with optional inexact-ADMM inner-tolerance scheduling via linear_solver_tolerance_ratio.
• Add the basic_conveyor_forces example: a multi-belt conveyor circuit that transports rigid boxes with per-belt velocity fields, applying Coulomb-limited tangential body forces from reported per-contact normal forces across SolverXPBD, SolverVBD, and SolverMuJoCo.
• Add optional shear_stiffness/shear_damping and twist_stiffness/twist_damping controls to ModelBuilder.add_joint_cable(), ModelBuilder.add_rod(), and ModelBuilder.add_rod_graph(); omitted shear defaults to stretch and omitted twist defaults to bend for compatibility.
• Add newton.utils.CableStiffness and extend newton.utils.create_cable_stiffness_from_elastic_moduli() with poissons_ratio/shear_modulus inputs that include torsional GJ/L stiffness.
• Add VBD cable validation examples covering bend stiffness, analytical bend/twist response, torsion material mapping, routed twist transfer, twist-buckling link verification, Michell/Zajac threshold behavior, and Dahl hysteresis.
• Add a cable plectoneme example demonstrating twist-driven supercoiling with self-contact.
• Import authored USD cable stretch, shear, bend, and twist stiffness independently through ModelBuilder.add_usd().
• Add compiled regular-expression support to label-based selectors while preserving glob strings.
• Add simulation throughput, real-time factor, p95 step-time, steady-state GPU-memory, timestep, and MuJoCo solver-iteration metrics to the ASV robot-learning benchmarks.
• Add joint_dof_mask to newton.ik.IKSolver to keep selected joint DOFs fixed during LM optimization. (#3488)
• Add SolverMuJoCo(disable_sensors=True) to skip MuJoCo sensor computation.
• Add masked deformable reset to SolverVBD.reset(): StateFlags.PARTICLE_Q / StateFlags.PARTICLE_QD restore cloth and soft-body particle state per world selected by world_mask. (#3760; fixes #3400)

Changed

• Filter shared full-surface soft contacts per SolverCoupled entry, preserving them for capable solvers and dropping them for particle-only solvers or records spanning entries.
• Follow USD viewport purpose and visibility for imported visual geometry and colliders rather than inferring visibility from a bound render material. Visual shapes and Gaussian splats are drawn only for default and proxy; a collider whose purpose resolves to default is drawn, while guide identifies collision-only geometry. force_show_colliders and hide_collision_shapes are unchanged. (#3404, #3712)
• Require warp-lang>=1.16.0; upgrade Warp to version 1.16.0 or later. (#3780)
• Disable the implicit positive Dahl-friction defaults in SolverVBD.register_custom_attributes() (deprecated in 1.3.0): vbd:dahl_eps_max and vbd:dahl_tau now default to zero, and Dahl cable friction is enabled only where both are authored positive. Pass dahl_defaults_enabled=True to temporarily restore the old defaults; the compatibility mode will be removed in a future release.
• Keep the authored render mesh when ModelBuilder.add_usd() approximates a collider. physics:approximation is scoped to collision, so a Mesh that is both render geometry and a collider now imports as an approximated collision shape plus a visual shape carrying the original topology, instead of replacing the render mesh with the approximation. This raises Model.shape_count for such prims: iterate on ShapeFlags.COLLIDE_SHAPES rather than assuming one shape per collider prim. The visual shape adds no mass and no collision, appends after the originals so existing shape indices and path_shape_map entries are unchanged, and is skipped when load_visual_shapes=False.
• Compile tiled camera render kernels with CUDA fast math by default for faster rendering; set SensorTiledCamera.default_render_config.enable_fast_math = False for bit-exact, IEEE-precise output.
• Disable HydroelasticSDF.Config.pre_prune_contacts when CollisionPipeline(deterministic=True) (implied by any contact_matching mode other than "disabled"). Pre-pruning ranks faces per thread, so it cannot be made reproducible. The face-contact buffer doubles because contact_buffer_fraction no longer applies, and the generated contact set differs from the non-deterministic default. Deterministic hydroelastic contacts also cap the buffer at 2^20 faces; lower buffer_mult_contact or buffer_fraction if construction now raises.
• Make CollisionPipeline the sole owner of rigid-contact geometry for SolverVBD: "latest" supplies fresh geometry and "sticky" supplies replayed geometry. SolverVBD(rigid_contact_history=True) uses either mode's match indices only to warm-start its numeric lambda/penalty state.
• Upgrade mujoco and mujoco-warp to 3.11.0. (#3725)
• Optimize raycast/raytrace queries by restructuring ray-shape intersection into local-space primitives and compile specialized depth/shadow variants that skip unused surface-normal work (mesh shadows also use any-hit queries).
• Change experimental SolverVBD cable constraint slots from [STRETCH=0, BEND=1] to [STRETCH=0, SHEAR=1, BEND=2, TWIST=3], allowing each stiffness and constraint mode to be configured independently while preserving the pre-split world-form parent solve Hessian for the common isotropic component of stretch/shear elasticity. Existing cable calls using raw slot=1 or JointSlot.ANGULAR now select shear; use JointSlot.BEND (now slot 2) to select bending.
• Map shape_material_kf to per-contact MuJoCo solreffriction in SolverMuJoCo (elliptic friction cones with Newton contacts); resolve kf with priority/solmix, treat a resolved kf = 0 as frictionless, and use native MuJoCo contacts or a pyramidal cone to preserve the previous solref-inherited friction.
• Load visual-only USD geometry outside rigid-body hierarchies as static shapes by default; pass load_static_visual_shapes=False to retain the previous body-associated-visuals-only behavior.
• Speed up Mesh.create_heightfield() and Mesh.create_terrain() by building the vertex and index buffers in place, substantially reducing construction time and peak memory for large terrain grids such as those used by Isaac Lab.
• Optimize VBD cable bend-twist Jacobian assembly while preserving residual-consistent behavior near folds.
• Load solver backends lazily on first access to speed up import newton; access solver classes through newton.solvers as before, and import solver modules explicitly if module-level side effects are required.
• Reduce SolverKamino kernel compilation time. (#3564)
• Speed up USD mesh import for faceVarying normals by resolving the common single-cluster case for all vertices at once instead of clustering every face corner in Python; the split vertices, indices, normals, and UVs are unchanged, except that a corner sitting exactly at vertex_splitting_angle_threshold_deg from its cluster may now cluster differently.
• Speed up ModelBuilder.replicate() for large world counts by merging all copies in one pass; it no longer calls add_world() or add_builder() per copy, so ModelBuilder subclass overrides of those methods are not invoked during replication. Move required subclass behavior outside those overrides, or call add_world() / add_builder() explicitly instead of replicate().
• Treat BodyFlags.KINEMATIC bodies as zero-effective-mass implicit-MPM colliders when SolverImplicitMPM.setup_collider() is called without body_mass. Pass an explicit body_mass array to override the model-derived collider masses.
• Warn from ModelBuilder.add_joint() when adding a joint between bodies that are already directly connected, since parallel joints are ambiguous and may behave differently across solvers. When replacing the implicit free joint created by add_body(), use add_link() and then add the intended joint explicitly. (#3207)
• Reject inconsistent per-particle array lengths during bulk model construction and finalization. Ensure pos, vel, mass, and any radius or flags arrays passed to add_particles() have equal lengths, and keep finalized per-particle arrays aligned with particle_count. (#3458)
• Reject invalid ModelBuilder.ShapeConfig SDF and density values during shape validation. Use finite nonnegative density and SDF padding, a finite positive target voxel size, a narrow-band range satisfying inner < 0 < outer, and a positive maximum resolution below 65536 that is divisible by 8; set either maximum resolution or target voxel size, not both. (#3311)
• Reject runtime changes that alter SolverKamino's as-built joint constraint counts, passive/actuated partition, or finite-limit structure; recreate the solver after making one of these structural changes. (#3532)
• Cull positive-distance speculative contacts by default when converting Newton contacts for SolverKamino as a temporary workaround for restitution issues. No public compatibility option restores the old behavior; if a scene needs contact forces before geometry surfaces touch, increase ModelBuilder.ShapeConfig.margin so margin-shifted surfaces overlap at the desired force onset, and re-test contact behavior. (#3779)

Deprecated

• Deprecate scalar ModelBuilder.gravity; pass a three-component gravity vector instead. (#3324)
• Deprecate local-only SolverBase.reset() world masks in favor of masks with shape (world_count + 1,); append a final entry that selects global entities in world -1. (#3726; fixes #3374)
• Deprecate and ignore SolverVBD's rigid_contact_stick_motion_eps, rigid_contact_stick_freeze_translation_eps, and rigid_contact_stick_freeze_angular_eps; use collision-pipeline sticky matching for persistent geometry. The SolverVBD body deadzone was removed without replacement. (#3652)
• Deprecate Model.contacts() and Model.collide() in favor of explicitly creating a CollisionPipeline, allocating with pipeline.contacts(), and detecting collisions with pipeline.collide(state, contacts). (#3409)
• Deprecate the legacy DOF-shaped joint_target_q layout (newton.use_coord_layout_targets = False) for models whose joint coordinate and DOF counts differ (free/ball/distance joints); ModelBuilder.finalize() now emits a DeprecationWarning for such models. Set newton.use_coord_layout_targets = True before building models and index targets via Model.joint_target_q_start. A future release will make the coordinate layout the only layout and remove the flag.

Removed

• Remove the deprecated joint_target_pos / joint_target_vel aliases from Model, Control, and ModelBuilder (deprecated in 1.3.0); use joint_target_q / joint_target_qd instead. Reading or assigning the removed names raises AttributeError naming the replacement, so a stale control.joint_target_pos = targets fails loudly instead of being silently ignored. Actuator now always defaults control_target_pos_attr / control_target_vel_attr to the canonical joint_target_q / joint_target_qd names; passing None explicitly selects the same defaults.
• Remove the deprecated SDF compatibility attributes Model.shape_sdf_index, Model.texture_sdf_data, Model.texture_sdf_coarse_textures, Model.texture_sdf_subgrid_textures, Model.texture_sdf_subgrid_start_slots, Model.sdf_block_coords, Model.sdf_index2blocks, and SDF.texture_block_coords (deprecated in 1.3.0); the hydroelastic broadphase derives block coordinates arithmetically and the remaining storage is internal. (#3622)
• Remove the deprecated newton.geometry.build_bvh_shape(), refit_bvh_shape(), build_bvh_particle(), and refit_bvh_particle() helpers (deprecated in 1.3.0); use Model.bvh_build_shapes(), Model.bvh_refit_shapes(), Model.bvh_build_particles(), and Model.bvh_refit_particles() instead. (#3619)
• Remove the deprecated Model.has_heightfields property (deprecated in 1.3.0); use Model.heightfield_count, or model.heightfield_count > 0 for boolean checks, instead. (#3619)
• Remove the deprecated SolverNotifyFlags enum (deprecated in 1.3.0); use ModelFlags instead. (#3619)
• Remove the deprecated ls_parallel parameter of SolverMuJoCo (deprecated in 1.3.0); parallel line search was removed from mujoco_warp and the option had no effect. (#3619)

Fixed

• Fix MPR returning scale-dependent, excessively deep contacts for small convex shapes on large mesh triangles while preserving triangle-specific shared-edge manifold witnesses. (#3766)
• Make deterministic collision pipelines cover hydroelastic contact generation and reduction, including unique reduced-contact sort keys and overflow-safe fixed-point pressure accumulation. (#3661)
• Fix SolverMuJoCo retaining an invalid external-contact cache when its first step is captured in a CUDA graph. (#3768; fixes #3767)
• Preserve box-box face contact manifolds under sub-microradian solver drift. (#3776)
• Fix SolverMuJoCo overflowing MuJoCo's signed 32-bit collision masks when graph coloring requires the highest supported color; all 32 mask bits are now used before falling back to default collision masks for additional colors.
• Convert newton:mimicCoef0 from degrees to radians when the mimic follower joint is angular. Assets authored against the old behavior need the value rescaled to degrees.
• Complete Kamino RCM traversal for large and disconnected systems and reuse the resulting permutation by default; set reuse_permutation=False to recompute it for changing matrix topology.
• Bound Kamino DVI contact allocation with a per-world geometry heuristic instead of sizing every contact pair simultaneously; set collision_detector.max_contacts_per_world to override the inferred capacity.
• Fix panel-parallel RCM-blocked LLT factorization hanging when a matrix ends in a partial tile.
• Fix USD capsule, cylinder, and cone visual and site scaling to follow the authored primitive axis.
• Fix MJCF contact pairs ignoring properties inherited from pair default classes.
• Fix disabled USD colliders participating in particle collisions when visual shape loading is disabled.
• Fix ArticulationView.is_fixed_base for roots with zero effective degrees of freedom, including fully locked D6 joints. (#3727)
• Fix USD plane visual width and length to scale along the axes defined by the UsdGeomPlane schema, and orient X- and Y-axis plane visuals along the authored axis.
• Validate ArticulationView mask shapes and devices before launching selection kernels. (#3448)
• Exclude active particles with non-finite positions from rebuildable SolverImplicitMPM sparse-grid packing.
• Fix incorrect hydroelastic contact surfaces for primitive shapes. (#3150, #3239)
• Fix masked SolverCoupledProxy.reset() calls clearing proxy feedback history for unselected worlds.
• Fix masked solver resets modifying unselected worlds or discarding their coupling and contact history.
• Fix MJCF, URDF, and USD imports rendering collision-only bodies as visuals when the asset authors visual geometry elsewhere. (#3291)
• Fix fully locked XPBD joints becoming permanently separated after large transient anchor errors.
• Fix SchemaResolverPhysx reading every D6 translational limit gain from the linear instance instead of its transX, transY, or transZ instance.
• Fix USD capsule, cylinder, and cone visuals and sites without authored radius/height to use the UsdGeom schema fallbacks, matching collision shapes.
• Fix ViewerUSD texture consumers observing partially written PNGs by publishing generated textures atomically (#3288)
• Fix loading of textures packaged inside .usdz archives; package-relative asset paths such as scene.usdz[tex.png] are resolved through USD's asset resolver instead of being treated as filesystem paths.
• Preserve cross-import collision pairs when SolverMuJoCo combines independently imported MJCF mask domains.
• Fix ModelBuilder.add_usd() raising ValueError when importing a mesh whose material subset binds a texture that decodes to an image array.
• Fix ModelBuilder.add_usd() dropping textures from full meshes and material subsets without recoverable UVs; preserve the texture for projected rendering.
• Fix textured USD visual meshes and material subsets rendering tinted by scalar or default per-shape colors; textured meshes now import with a white base color so their textures are shown untinted.
• Fix ModelBuilder.add_usd() selecting a non-color map (e.g. a roughness, metallic, or normal map) as a mesh's base-color texture. A connected UsdUVTexture is now accepted only when it feeds a base-color input by name through its multi-channel color output, and a shader's direct-asset color parameter (e.g. an MDL diffuse_texture) is likewise identified by name.
• Fix MJCF imports ignoring compiler assetdir when resolving mesh, texture, and heightfield assets.
• Fix scrambled textures on USD meshes whose texture-coordinate primvar is not named st (e.g. st_0). The texcoord set is now resolved from the bound material's shader network (the UsdPreviewSurface texture reader's varname or an MDL/OmniPBR uv_space_index), and textured material subsets slice real per-corner UVs and authored normals instead of collapsing faceVarying data per vertex.
• Fix builder merging (ModelBuilder.add_builder(), add_world(), replicate()) offsetting negative reference sentinels in custom attribute values stored as NumPy or Warp integer scalars.
• Fix ModelBuilder.add_usd() requiring the optional mujoco package when handling MjcActuator prims, including during default MJC equality conversion.
• Fix ModelBuilder.add_usd() ignoring enabled collider mass properties and counting disabled colliders toward body mass. (#3594)
• Fix ModelBuilder.add_usd() treating explicitly authored USD MassAPI schema fallback values (zero mass, density, inertia, or principal axes; non-finite center of mass) as overrides; per the schema's value semantics they now behave like unauthored attributes, while negative or non-finite mass, density, and diagonal inertia values are ignored with a warning. (#3418)
• Report malformed MJCF free-joint and inertial inputs with deterministic validation errors, and ignore MJCF mesh geom size lengths consistently.
• Fix MJCF imports ignoring material and inline RGBA colors on primitive geoms.
• Preserve MJCF contype/conaffinity collision filtering when importing into Newton, and compose later Newton pair filters when using native MuJoCo contacts.
• Fix SolverMuJoCo site poses for offset batched worlds and site poses and sizes for runtime shape updates. (#3389)
• Fix ModelBuilder.add_usd() silently dropping a MuJoCo joint equality constraint when the asset supplies the leader joint and coefficients through NewtonMimicAPI instead of the deprecated mjc:target, mjc:coef0, and mjc:coef1. MjcEqualityJointAPI builds on NewtonMimicAPI, so both spellings are now accepted.
• Fix ModelBuilder.add_usd() ignoring newton:mimicEnabled on a joint with MjcEqualityJointAPI applied. Such a joint is now imported disabled rather than coupled, which also stops the default equality conversion from enforcing the coupling in every solver.
• Fix SolverVBD failing to construct on large multi-world scenes containing particles and rigid shapes. (#3660)
• Fix SolverKamino runtime model updates for joint limits, body inertia and centers of mass, shape properties, and forward-kinematics state. (#3386, #3549, #3577, #3602)
• Fix Style3D solver divergence caused by isolated vertices.
• Fix a use-after-free where finalizing a second model built from shared mesh geometry (e.g. via ModelBuilder.replicate() or ModelBuilder.add_builder()) invalidated the meshes referenced by previously finalized models.
• Fix compiler warnings about overflowing int32 constants when compiling SDF texture and SensorTiledCamera kernels.
• Fix SolverVBD particles using world 0 gravity in multi-world models instead of their assigned world's gravity. (#3692)
• Fix SensorIMU to use per-world gravity for world-local sites not attached to a body.
• Fix USD site import to discover sites beneath non-visual containers, collider prims, and instanceable rigid-body prims independently of load_visual_shapes; the reworked traversal also speeds up import of scenes with many nested Xform or instance prims.
• Fix SolverFeatherstone BALL joints to apply passive joint_damping on all three angular DOFs.
• Fix eval_ik() and SolverSemiImplicit rounding small float32 revolute-joint angles to zero. (#3434)
• Fix excessive memory usage when importing MJCF or URDF models containing many visual-only shapes with self-collisions disabled.
• Prevent explicit MJCF classes from retaining unrelated childclass defaults.
• Fix FastKitchenG1 ASV metrics to build the kitchen scene instead of a plain G1 model.
• Fix the diffsim_bear example crashing with its default CUDA configuration and diverging after a few training iterations.
• Fix masked PID state reset to execute on the integral-state device. (#3447)
• Fix SolverKamino to preserve resets for bodies whose center of mass is offset from the body frame. (#3605)
• Fix a spurious SolverKamino floating-base reset warning. (#3563)
• Fix eval_inverse_dynamics_passive() reading past a DOF-sized scratch buffer under newton.use_coord_layout_targets = True, producing intermittent NaNs for models with free, ball, or distance joints.
• Fix MJCF imports ignoring fromto transforms and lengths on sites.
• Reject invalid hollow primitive shell thickness before computing inertia.
• Fix convex decomposition of disconnected mesh components so unified multi-part collision meshes preserve separate convex parts. (#3261)
• Fix ModelBuilder.add_mjcf() ignoring positive explicit mass on mesh geoms. (#3595)
• Preserve muscles and rigid-body color groups when copying or replicating a ModelBuilder.
• Fix ModelBuilder.add_usd() to honor PhysicsScene.gravityDirection, including stage-to-builder rotation and per-world imports.
• Fix ModelBuilder.add_usd() to initialize maximal and free-base generalized state from authored rigid-body velocities, including local-to-world rotation and angular unit conversion. (#3322)
• Fix ModelBuilder.collapse_fixed_joints() to transport body velocity when merging changes the center of mass. (#3322)
• Fix ModelBuilder.add_mjcf() to honor compiler inertiafromgeom and inertiagrouprange, and keep inferred mass independent of parse_visuals. (#3596)
• Fix SolverKamino free-joint Jacobians to follow Newton's child-center-of-mass wrench convention. (#3707)
• Fix passive universal-joint constraints in SolverKamino forward kinematics. (#3720)
• Fix SolverKamino contact warm-starting reading past the active contact buffer when a geometry-pair run reaches the end of the prior contact set. (#3641)
• Fix SolverKamino contact-buffer undersizing for plane pairs, heterogeneous multi-world scenes, external collision pipelines, and saturated earlier worlds. max_contacts remains a model-wide cap on inferred geometry budgets; set collision_detector.max_contacts_per_world for an explicit per-world capacity. (#3732)
• Fix stale overlay layers remaining visible after switching examples in the OpenGL viewer.
• Fix SolverKamino CG/CR solves silently under-iterating on CPU graph capture; the capture-safe loop path now runs on any capturing device, not only CUDA, so CPU captures no longer record a stale host-readback convergence decision at record time.
• Reject incompatible custom attribute and frequency definitions before composing ModelBuilder instances.
• Fix cloth_franka example rendering particles at simulation scale (cm) instead of viewer scale (m)
• Fix ModelBuilder merges to accept array-valued transform fields and plain-list particle color groups.
• Fix SensorTiledCamera tiled rendering for image sizes that are not exact multiples of the configured tile dimensions.
• Fix SensorTiledCamera deformable triangle rendering to respect per-particle world indices.
• Fix USD import topology depending on material vocabulary: mesh subsets now split on the authored material-binding structure, so a subset bound to a material whose properties Newton does not recognize (e.g. an MDL shader) imports as its own unshaded submesh instead of changing the mesh's imported shape count. (#3351)

[1.4.0] - 2026-07-16

Added

• Add experimental ModelBuilder.add_usd() support for the proposed AOUSD Deformable Body Physics schema: (#3192)
  • Import curves as cables made of capsule bodies connected by cable joints, with each cable wrapped in its own articulation; import meshes as cloth and tet meshes as soft bodies. Bound deformable materials supply thickness, stiffness, and density, and mass precedence is per-point physics:masses, then body mass/density, then material density. Return element ranges and authored cable/cloth attributes (path_cable_attrs / path_cloth_attrs) by prim path as build-time snapshots. Collision participation follows PhysicsCollisionAPI / physics:collisionEnabled: cables without an enabled collider import without collision, while cloth/volume collision disabling warns as unsupported. Cable physics:filteredPairs expand to segment shapes; cloth/volume pairs warn and are not lowered. Disabled or kinematic deformables and malformed topology warn and are skipped.
  • Import cable PhysicsAttachment prims. Hard point/segment sites targeting an xform become ball joints returned in path_attachment_map; hard coincident point-to-point cable attachments weld the cables into one rod graph. Unsupported cloth/volume, springy, or non-coincident attachments warn and remain available in path_attachment_attrs.
  • Return deformable element/attribute maps and attachment maps only with return_deformable_results=True. Without it, the default add_usd() return mapping remains unchanged and contains no deformable entries.
  • Import PhysicsElementCollisionFilter prims for cable, rigid-body, and collider element groups. Group counts pair elements in order; a count of 0 or an empty counts array selects all elements. Unsupported cloth/volume element sources warn and are skipped.
  • Add newton.usd.DEFORMABLE_LEGACY_NAMESPACES for explicitly retaining legacy deformable material namespace compatibility during migration.
• Add scalar value-based OpenCV, F-theta, and Kannala-Brandt fisheye camera ray helpers to SensorTiledCamera.utils, plus pinhole aperture/focal-length parameters, compute_camera_transforms_usd(), compute_camera_rays_usd_pinhole(), and optional preallocated ray output writes. (#3026)
• Add cloth_stiff_material_hanging and cloth_stiff_material_stretch examples regression-guarding the new Neo-Hookean triangle material (stability under gravity at extreme stiffness, and bulk area-preservation across a Poisson-ratio sweep)
• Add ViewerUSD(points_as_spheres=...) to render log_points particles as a UsdGeom.PointInstancer of sphere prototypes; enabled by default (opt out with points_as_spheres=False for flat UsdGeom.Points splats). (#2990)
• Add ViewerBase.camera_speed to configure keyboard translation speed for interactive viewers. (#3478)
• Add list-of-pattern and explicit-index selectors to ArticulationView. (#3294)
• Add newton[onnx] for ONNX policy inference through Warp-NN; ControllerNeuralMLP, ControllerNeuralLSTM, and RL policy examples can run exported .onnx policies without requiring PyTorch for ONNX execution. (#3227)
• Add three VBD contact examples — vbd_rigid_rigid_contact, vbd_soft_rigid_contact, and vbd_soft_rigid_mix_contact — demonstrating rigid-rigid, soft (particle-rigid), and mixed cloth-bag contacts
• Add masked rigid-body reset support to SolverVBD; particle resets are not yet supported. (#3316)
• Add viewer layer system to overlay multiple solvers/models in supported rendering viewers; call ViewerBase.activate(layer_id) to route subsequent set_model / log_state / log_* calls into a named layer, ViewerBase.set_layer_visible() to toggle layers independently, and ViewerBase.set_layer_transform() to position layers side-by-side. See example_basic_multi_solver_overlay.py. (#2876)
• Add SDF contact support for convex-hull shapes with mesh-attached SDFs and opt-in SDF contact generation for box shapes.
• Add opt-in filtering of static-static, static-kinematic, and kinematic-kinematic contacts during broad-phase collision detection. Set CollisionPipeline(include_static_kinematic_pairs=False) to enable filtering; the default preserves existing contact generation. Model.shape_contact_pairs remains an unfiltered superset for direct consumers such as SolverKamino and hydroelastic SDF setup.
• Add opt-in body_frame_origin="com" to ModelBuilder.add_rod() and ModelBuilder.add_rod_graph() for COM-centered cable capsule body frames.
• Add Model.shape_collision_filter_contains(), Model.shape_collision_filter_mask(), and Model.shape_collision_filter_pairs_array() for solver integrations that need collision-filter queries. (#3187)
• Add CollisionPipeline.soft_rigid_contact_pair_count for the number of precomputed soft-rigid (particle-shape) candidate pairs, filtered to compatible worlds, launched for soft-contact generation; this is the default capacity for soft_contact_max
• Add user-defined pressure laws to hydroelastic SDF contact via HydroelasticSDF.Config.pressure_func (a @wp.func mapping (signed_depth, shape_idx, data) -> pressure) and pressure_data (a @wp.struct carrying per-shape state). The contact patch is the iso-pressure surface p_a == p_b; the default linear law pressure = -kh * signed_depth is preserved when no callback is supplied. (#2705)
• Add SensorTiledCamera.utils.assign_checkerboard_material(shape_indices=...) for applying the checkerboard texture to selected shapes.
• Add USD import support for NewtonJointAPI (newton:armature, newton:damping, newton:friction, newton:velocityLimit, newton:limitStiffness, newton:limitDamping). Attributes broadcast uniformly to every DOF on the joint. If per DOF variance is required, recommendation is to break apart into 1-DOF (i.e. revolute & prismatic) joints instead. (#3275)
• Add support for pt2 neural-network checkpoints (saved via torch.export.save) in ControllerNeuralMLP and ControllerNeuralLSTM. (#3356)
• Add a deterministic constructor argument to SolverXPBD, SolverSemiImplicit, SolverFeatherstone, SolverVBD, and SolverMuJoCo to opt into deterministic solver execution; the default inherits wp.config.deterministic. (#3300)
• Add SolverKamino.ResetConfig for explicit reset source configuration. (#3220)
• Add configurable friction and restitution mixing modes (average, multiply, max, or min) for SolverKamino through SolverKamino.Config().materials.friction_mix_mode and .restitution_mix_mode. (#3382)
• Add SolverMuJoCo.EqType as the MuJoCo-scoped equality-constraint enum. (#3296)
• Add SensorContact.position_matrix alongside force_matrix, reporting per-counterpart world-frame contact positions (force-weighted average of contact midpoints). (#3369)
• Forward --warp-config KEY=VALUE from python -m newton.tests to example subprocesses so warp.config overrides apply during example tests.
• Add --render-fps to cap example rendering rate without changing simulation frame timing
• Add basic_dzhanibekov example demonstrating free rigid-body intermediate-axis instability across VBD, XPBD, and MuJoCo solvers
• Add experimental inverse-dynamics evaluation for articulated systems: eval_inverse_dynamics_passive() populates any requested mass matrix, gravity force, and Coriolis force in caller-allocated arrays, while eval_inverse_dynamics_force() combines them with a caller-provided joint_qdd into joint_f; both functions support articulation masks directly and through ArticulationView. (#2753, #3530)
• Expose MeshAdjacencyData (the device-resident soft-mesh adjacency struct returned by MeshAdjacency.to()) as public API for use in custom Warp kernels. (#3194)
• Add Model.AttributeSpec and Model.attribute_specs for declaring model-attribute indexing, references, and view/compaction behavior in one metadata registry. (#2848)
• Add ModelBuilder.BvhConfig for selecting Warp BVH constructors during model finalization for mesh, Gaussian, and shape BVHs. (#2864)
• Add an experimental coupled solver framework: (#2848)
  • Introduce newton.solvers.experimental.coupled with SolverCoupled, SolverCoupledProxy, SolverCoupledADMM, and ModelView for multi-solver ownership, state mapping, and view-local model overrides.
  • Support body and particle proxy coupling with virtual inertia, solver hooks, MPM collider/transfer proxies, and convergence diagnostics.
  • Support ADMM coupling from model-derived joints, body-particle attachments, and collision-detected rigid/particle contacts with Coulomb friction.
  • Add standalone multiphysics examples and regression coverage for MuJoCo/Kamino, VBD, XPBD, MPM, and ADMM contacts.
  • Add --coupled-view to coupled multiphysics examples and expose SolverCoupled entry view/state helpers for rendering individual sub-solver views.
• Add BODY_F, PARTICLE_F, and JOINT_F to StateFlags. (#2848)
• Add newton.usd.get_mesh() and extend Mesh.create_from_usd() to load USD mesh prims, stages, file paths, and URLs. (#3214)
• Add opt-in full-surface rigid-soft contact generation: (#3262)
  • Set enable_rigid_soft_full_surface_contact=True on Model.collide() or CollisionPipeline, and provision participating rigid mesh/convex volume SDFs with ModelBuilder.ShapeConfig.configure_sdf(force_sdf=True) before finalize(). The default remains the previous per-particle contact path.
  • Detect soft-triangle edge and face crossings in addition to particle contacts. Contacts.soft_contact_indices stores soft particle IDs as a vec3i with -1 padding—(p, -1, -1) for a particle, (v0, v1, -1) for an edge, and (v0, v1, v2) for a face—and Contacts.soft_contact_barycentric stores the corresponding weights. Heightfields and finite planes warn and fall back to per-particle contact; a participating mesh/convex without a provisioned SDF is an error.
  • Consume full-surface contacts with standalone SolverVBD. Other solvers and SolverCoupledProxy two-way coupling reject them. See the new vbd_gripper_soft_grid and vbd_gripper_soft_triangle examples.

Changed

• Require warp-lang>=1.15.0 for Newton and newton-usd-schemas>=0.4.0 for the importers extra. (#3275, #3422)
• Upgrade mujoco to 3.10 and mujoco-warp to 3.10.0.2, and propagate Model.shape_gap into MuJoCo's geom_gap/pair_gap so contact-detection ranges authored on Newton shapes are honored by MuJoCo's broadphase. Shapes without an explicit gap inherit ModelBuilder.rigid_gap = 0.1, which now reaches MuJoCo and may increase detected contacts, sensor output, contact-buffer pressure, and runtime. To preserve the previous detection envelope, set builder.rigid_gap = 0.0 before adding shapes or use ModelBuilder.ShapeConfig(gap=0.0) per shape. (#3502; fixes #2980)
• Continue accepting the deprecated SolverMuJoCo(ls_parallel=...) argument for compatibility, but ignore its value because MuJoCo Warp removed parallel line search; remove the argument from solver construction. (#2980)
• Align MJCF and USD margin/gap import with MuJoCo 3.9+. Drop the mj_margin - mj_gap subtraction; Model.shape_margin now matches authored margin, and Model.shape_gap matches authored gap. Pass legacy_margin_gap=True to ModelBuilder.add_mjcf() or ModelBuilder.add_usd() to restore the pre-3.9 translation for files authored against MuJoCo <= 3.8. (#2980)
• Allow standalone world-root joints to remain outside articulation metadata during ModelBuilder.finalize(); use SolverXPBD, SolverSemiImplicit, or SolverMuJoCo's standalone-root fallback, or add the joints to an articulation for solvers that require reduced-coordinate articulation metadata. (#3119)
• Non-schema per-DOF initial state attributes (newton:{axis}:position, newton:{axis}:velocity) now emit a UserWarning when encountered during USD import, directing users to file a feature request.
• Change the default CoACD convex decomposition threshold from 0.5 to 0.05 to match CoACD's default. To preserve the previous coarse decomposition, set builder.default_mesh_approximation_cfg.coacd_threshold = 0.5; it applies whenever threshold is not passed explicitly to ModelBuilder.approximate_meshes(), including USD imports through add_usd(). (#3471; fixes #3444)
• Reject out-of-range integer indices passed to ArticulationView.include_joints or include_links; ensure every index is within the articulation's joint or link range. (#3294)
• Enable particle-particle contact forces by default in standalone SolverSemiImplicit: the solver now rebuilds Model.particle_grid every substep and adds contact forces to the existing particle_f. Existing scenes with particles closer than 2 * particle_max_radius + particle_cohesion may change trajectories; set model.particle_grid = None before stepping to preserve the previous behavior without particle-particle contacts. (#2848)
• Change CollisionPipeline.soft_contact_max to default to the precomputed soft_rigid_contact_pair_count instead of shape_count * particle_count; pass soft_contact_max=model.shape_count * model.particle_count to preserve the previous capacity. (#3118)
• Correct SolverFeatherstone to honor the existing public FREE/DISTANCE joint_qd convention: six values per joint as child-COM linear velocity followed by angular velocity, both expressed in the joint parent frame. Do not reorder existing inputs. Floating-root FREE/DISTANCE articulations now use a root-COM-centered internal solve frame for improved stability far from the world origin; their trajectories may differ numerically and should be retested. (#2539)
• Exclude particles without ParticleFlags.ACTIVE from SolverImplicitMPM grid transfers, including mass and velocity. Simulations that used inactive particles as fixed obstacles must keep those particles active and set their mass to 0 to retain kinematic boundary behavior. (#2848)
• Add collider_particle_ids to SolverImplicitMPM.setup_collider() for deformable mesh colliders and make all parameters keyword-only. Pass every argument by name. (#2848, #3524)
• Breaking change (experimental SolverVBD): Change damping semantics. Existing kd-family values produce different damping and must be converted or retuned: (#2877)
  • Interpret damping coefficients as absolute physical units instead of dimensionless stiffness-relative (Rayleigh) multipliers (D = kd · ke). Affected parameters are tetrahedral k_damp [Pa·s], tri_kd, spring kd [N·s/m], cable stretch_damping [N·s/m] and bend_damping [N·m·s/rad] in add_joint_cable() / add_rod() / add_rod_graph(), joint_target_kd, joint_limit_kd (including JointDofConfig.limit_kd), shape contact kd / shape_material_kd, soft_contact_kd [N·s/m], and SolverVBD(rigid_joint_linear_kd=..., rigid_joint_angular_kd=...). To preserve previous values, set kd_new = kd_old · k, where k is the paired stiffness or penalty coefficient, and pass the product to the same field.
  • Use an objective Neo-Hookean membrane/tet damping metric based on the rate of C = FᵀF, so rigid-body rotations no longer generate damping force. Re-tune scenes that relied on damping from rigid rotation.
  • Apply spring damping only along the spring axis, so transverse and rigid-rotational motion is no longer damped. Re-tune scenes that relied on transverse damping.
• Apply each shape's ShapeConfig.margin (model.shape_margin) to SolverVBD particle-rigid (soft) contacts, widening the soft-contact detection shell and reducing penetration depth per shape; previously only the global soft_contact_margin and particle radius were used. Re-check VBD scenes that set per-shape margins. (#2994)
• Rework SolverKamino.reset() to use an explicit ResetConfig and wp.bool world masks. Replace the previous reset-source keyword arguments with ResetConfig.to_default(), ResetConfig.preserve(), ResetConfig.from_joints(), or an explicit ResetConfig(...); replace wp.int32 masks with wp.bool, for example wp.array([False, True, False], dtype=wp.bool) or wp.ones((num_worlds,), dtype=wp.bool). (#2934, #3220)
• Enable graph capture on CPU in examples and allow SolverVBD contact buffers to grow during CPU graph capture. (#3387)
• Assign one default visual color to capsule segments generated by ModelBuilder.add_rod() or add_rod_graph(); pass color= to choose an explicit cable color. (#2670)
• Move the MuJoCo guide from /integrations/mujoco to /solvers/mujoco and the Isaac Lab page from /integrations/isaac-lab to /lab/isaac-lab; use the new Solvers and Isaac Lab navigation entries.

Deprecated

• Deprecate newton.geometry.MATCH_BROKEN and newton.geometry.MATCH_NOT_FOUND without replacement; do not rely on or import these values. (#3498)
• Deprecate implicit render-config updates in SensorTiledCamera.utils.create_default_light() and SensorTiledCamera.utils.assign_checkerboard_material(); set sensor.default_render_config.enable_shadows or sensor.default_render_config.enable_textures explicitly instead. (#3408)
• Deprecate SensorTiledCamera(..., config=...) in favor of SensorTiledCamera(..., default_render_config=...); migrate constructor calls that pass a render config to the new keyword. (#3408)
• Deprecate SensorTiledCamera.render_config in favor of SensorTiledCamera.default_render_config; migrate sensor.render_config.enable_shadows = True to sensor.default_render_config.enable_shadows = True. (#3408)
• Deprecate per-DOF newton:{axis}:limitStiffness and newton:{axis}:limitDamping attributes (where {axis} is linear, angular, rotX, rotY, or rotZ). Use the broadcast newton:limitStiffness and newton:limitDamping attributes from NewtonJointAPI instead; the broadcast value applies uniformly to all DOFs on the joint. For joints requiring per-DOF variance, split into separate 1-DOF (revolute / prismatic) joints. (#3275)
• Deprecate passing solver constructor options positionally after stable positional inputs such as model and explicit solver configs; migrate calls such as SolverVBD(model, 10) to SolverVBD(model, iterations=10). (#2993)
• Deprecate ModelBuilder.find_shape_contact_pairs(); shape contact pairs are generated automatically by ModelBuilder.finalize(), so configure collision filters before finalization instead of rebuilding contact pairs manually. (#3187)
• Deprecate newton.EqType in favor of newton.solvers.SolverMuJoCo.EqType; migrate equality-constraint type references to the MuJoCo-scoped enum. (#3296)
• Deprecate unsorted integer indices for ArticulationView.include_joints and ArticulationView.include_links; sort indices in ascending order. (#3294)
• Deprecate State.body_q_prev without replacement because solvers now manage previous body transforms internally; applications that need pose history should clone State.body_q explicitly. (#3372)
• Deprecate passing option-heavy helper API parameters positionally, including ModelBuilder.ShapeConfig, ModelBuilder.JointDofConfig, Contacts, ArticulationView, and selected ModelBuilder body, joint, shape, rod, cloth, soft-body, and FEM helpers. Keep stable identifiers such as body, parent/child, capacity counts, and topology indices positional; migrate calls such as add_shape_box(body, xform, hx=...) to add_shape_box(body, xform=xform, hx=...). (#2993)
• Deprecate loading TorchScript (torch.jit.save) and dict (torch.save) neural-network checkpoints in ControllerNeuralMLP and ControllerNeuralLSTM; re-export legacy checkpoints as .pt2 archives with torch.export.save(). (#3356)
• Deprecate omitting body_frame_origin in ModelBuilder.add_rod() and ModelBuilder.add_rod_graph(); the implicit behavior still uses the existing start-node body-frame convention during the deprecation window, but the implicit default will change to body_frame_origin="com" in a future release. Pass body_frame_origin="start" to preserve the legacy frame or body_frame_origin="com" to opt into the future COM-centered frame. (#2670)
• Deprecate mutating Model.shape_collision_filter_pairs; modify ModelBuilder.shape_collision_filter_pairs before calling finalize() and rebuild the model instead, because mutating finalized collision filters does not rebuild Model.shape_contact_pairs. (#3187)
• Deprecate reading legacy vendor-namespaced deformable material attributes (omniphysics:, physxDeformableBody:) off any bound material in newton.usd.get_tetmesh(), newton.TetMesh.create_from_usd(), and ModelBuilder.add_usd(). They are still read during the deprecation window, with a DeprecationWarning; a future release will read only canonical physics: attributes from a material applying PhysicsVolumeDeformableMaterialAPI. Migrate by authoring the canonical attributes, or keep the old behavior without the warning via compat_namespaces=newton.usd.DEFORMABLE_LEGACY_NAMESPACES (get_tetmesh / create_from_usd) or schema_resolvers=[..., SchemaResolverPhysx()] (add_usd). compat_namespaces is now keyword-only; pass () to opt into the canonical-only behavior today. (#3192)
• Deprecate the indices argument of MeshAdjacency in favor of tri_indices. (#3194)
• Deprecate MeshAdjacency.add_edge; construct a MeshAdjacency with edge_indices ([o0, o1, v0, v1] rows) instead. (#3194)
• Deprecate the MeshAdjacency.edges dict accessor; use the edge_indices / edge_tri_indices arrays instead. (#3194)
• Deprecate SensorTiledCamera.utils.compute_pinhole_camera_rays() in favor of SensorTiledCamera.utils.compute_camera_rays_pinhole(). (#3026)

Fixed

• Tune VBD contact settings in the basic_shapes and cable_bundle_hysteresis examples for more consistent friction and recovery behavior. (#3446)
• Fix USD import ignoring ancestor material bindings with strongerThanDescendants strength when a mesh authors material:binding without applying MaterialBindingAPI: material resolution now uses UsdShade's canonical ComputeBoundMaterial unconditionally, which also adds collection-based binding support. Prims authoring bindings without the applied schema are invalid USD and now surface USD's own warning (once per prim per import) — fix such assets with usdchecker or usd-validation-nvidia. (#3350)
• Fix ModelBuilder.add_usd() to honor ignore_paths in the custom-frequency traversal, so prims under ignored subtrees no longer register spurious custom-frequency rows in two-pass import workflows. (#3406)
• Fix USD joint physics:collisionEnabled import so joints with two explicit bodies honor authored collision behavior; joints to world continue to allow body/world collisions, and articulation-wide self-collision filtering remains additive. (#3320)
• Fix ViewerFile.is_running() to return False after ViewerFile.close() so headless recording loops can terminate like interactive viewers. (#3190; fixes #3094)
• Fix mesh-approximation fallback behavior:
  • Stop forwarding CoACD/V-HACD-only keyword arguments to the convex-hull fallback when the decomposition backend fails or is unavailable.
  • Ignore incompatible non-mesh entries in explicit shape_indices; process GeoType.MESH and GeoType.CONVEX_MESH entries.
  • Replace failed remeshing results with the documented bounding-box approximation instead of leaving the original mesh in place.
• Raise an error when SolverVBD(rigid_contact_history=True) would allocate or grow contact-history buffers during CUDA graph capture; construct CollisionPipeline before SolverVBD, or run one uncaptured solver step before capture.
• Fix SensorTiledCamera.utils.convert_ray_depth_to_forward_depth() to preserve the clear-depth sentinel for zero-direction rays and non-positive depths.
• Fix SolverMuJoCo placing articulations whose root is a fully-locked D6 joint (e.g. imported from a generic USD PhysicsJoint) at the first world's root pose in every world; such roots now become mocap bodies like fixed-joint roots. (#3499; fixes #3430)
• Fix SensorTiledCamera rendering cloth and volume deformable vertices as particle spheres while preserving standalone particle rendering in mixed scenes. (#3518)
• Fix ViewerGL.get_frame() crashing when a CPU model is rendered while a CUDA context is active.
• Fix ViewerUSD leaving stale particle geometry visible when the active particle count drops to zero. (#2992)
• Fix eval_inverse_dynamics_passive() and SolverFeatherstone intermittently dropping descendant wrench contributions during the articulated-body backward pass on CUDA. (#3443)
• Fix XPBD particle-particle contacts to avoid non-finite particle state for exact-overlap contacts. (#1562)
• Refer to kf consistently as contact friction gain in public documentation. (#2988)
• Fix SolverMuJoCo dropping the authored actuator_ctrlrange/actuator_ctrllimited/actuator_forcerange/actuator_forcelimited when rebuilding USD/MJCF position/velocity actuators imported as JOINT_TARGET, so the compiled mj_model now clamps control targets and actuator forces like native MuJoCo.
• Fix SolverVBD rigid contact injecting kinetic energy for yawed finite-radius contacts (e.g. small-radius cables blowing up). The normal response now acts at the geometric skeleton point rather than the rotating surface anchor, which was non-conservative under reorientation; friction still uses the surface anchor to preserve finite-radius slip. (#3125)
• Fix SolverXPBD rigid restitution activation so contact thickness is not double-counted after applying contact offsets. (#3287; fixes #3034)
• Fix SolverKamino contact filtering and constraint stabilization so gap/margin contacts are handled consistently, positive-distance contacts can be filtered as configured, and converted contact forces/wrenches populate matching Newton contact slots for SensorContact. (#2908)
• Fix SolverKamino handling of Control.joint_f for joints with implicit joint dynamics: include the load in the joint equation and do not also apply it as an external body wrench. (#3134)
• Fix SolverKamino POSITION actuation to apply configured derivative damping toward zero velocity; existing position-controlled trajectories may need retuning if joint_target_kd is nonzero. (#3466)
• Fix masked SolverKamino.reset() calls to invalidate the contact and joint-limit warm-start caches only for the selected worlds. (#3393)
• Fix SolverMuJoCo convergence tolerance scaling for models with kinematic bodies.
• Fix SolverMuJoCo inertia randomization for bodies initialized with diagonal inertia.
• Fix SolverMuJoCo static worldbody geometry poses so offset batched worlds collide with their local geometry.
• Fix memory growth in the Style3D solver when CUDA Graph capture is disabled
• Limit mouse-picking torque using each body's rotational inertia to prevent unstable angular acceleration on low-inertia bodies.
• Fix multi-angular-DOF JointType.D6 kinematics and dynamics: (#2975)
  • Build newton.eval_jacobian, SolverFeatherstone, and IK analytic Jacobian angular motion-subspace columns in the current joint frame, so J @ joint_qd matches State.body_qd at non-identity configurations.
  • Report the correct SolverMuJoCo State.body_qd angular velocity at non-identity configurations.
  • Correct SolverFeatherstone Coriolis/centrifugal forces so torque-free bodies conserve angular momentum.
  • Correct newton.eval_fk() / newton.eval_ik() rotations and joint velocities when three angular axes form a left-handed orthonormal basis.
• Fix mesh inertia computation to produce deterministic results across repeated CUDA runs. (#3136)
• Fix SolverXPBD.step() rejecting contacts=None for particle models with shapes, and align its optional control and contact annotations with SolverBase.step().
• Fix ModelBuilder.add_builder() and ModelBuilder.finalize() time and memory scaling for large replicated scenes with collision filter pairs. (#1675)
• Fix mesh-SDF contacts with positive contact gaps by making contact reduction prefer margin-depth contacts over gap-only directional fallbacks. (#3490)
• Fix USD import of MjcJointAPI joints without authored mjc:solreflimit to use MuJoCo's (0.02, 1) default instead of ModelBuilder defaults. (#3286; fixes #2929)
• Fix SolverImplicitMPM whole-step CUDA graph capture failing when the rheology inner solver is an iterative linear method such as solver="cg". (#3155)
• Fix intermittent SolverCoupledADMM crashes when resetting particle-grid state. (#3467)
• Fix coupled solvers generating stale contacts after a contact-producing sub-solver is disabled. (#3477)
• Fix ControllerNeuralMLP and ControllerNeuralLSTM to feed raw joint velocity to the network instead of velocity error (target_vel - velocity), matching the actuator-net input convention used for training (position error and joint velocity). (#3413)
• Preserve MJCF geom visualization groups when constructing MuJoCo models. (#2492)
• Fix USD import so non-unit metersPerUnit and kilogramsPerUnit warn as unsupported, and stop scaling PhysicsScene gravity magnitude by metersPerUnit.
• Fix swapped kinetic and potential energy labels in the basic_plotting example, and report per-world values directly so the live plot overlays match the side-panel readouts
• Fix free-joint coordinate initialization and SolverMuJoCo coordinate conversion to respect parent body poses and non-identity joint_X_p / joint_X_c anchor transforms.
• Fix SolverMuJoCo loading USD models with supported standalone body-to-world joints outside an authored articulation, including Apptronik Apollo; warn when using this fallback and report unsupported rootless mechanisms explicitly.
• Fix USD import of MJCF weld and connect equalities that represent world with the stage's non-rigid default prim.
• Fix USD import of authored rigid-body centers of mass to apply inherited transform scale. (#3332)
• Fix VBD collision damping to use relative normal gap rate so uniform contact-stencil motion and tangential sliding do not create artificial normal damping.
• Fix SolverVBD building unused per-body rigid and particle contact lists for static and kinematic bodies, which caused unnecessary work and misleading contact-buffer overflow warnings.
• Fix multi-world soft contact filtering to avoid cross-world rigid-soft particle-shape pairs and VBD soft-soft triangle/edge candidates.
• Fix ModelBuilder.add_usd so a stray authored joint outside any articulation root no longer suppresses base-joint (articulation) creation for unrelated floating rigid bodies in the same call. (#3002)
• Fix SolverSemiImplicit ball joints to apply joint_damping on all three angular DOFs.
• Preserve unclassified MJCF geoms referenced by explicit contact pairs when parse_visuals=False. (#3284)
• Fix RenderContext triangle mesh construction by removing the unsupported device= keyword from wp.Mesh(...).
• Fix MJCF euler producing wrong orientations for multi-component angles by treating angles as intrinsic rotations. (#3030)
• Fix MJCF parsing so attributes from multiple <compiler> elements, including <include>-expanded children, are merged in document order. (#3030)
• Fix MJCF worldbody static geoms bypassing the visual/collider class filter, so parse_visuals=False drops visual-class geoms attached directly to <worldbody> too. (#3030)
• Fix ModelBuilder.add_usd() creating partial articulation metadata for jointed USD mechanisms without PhysicsArticulationRootAPI; keep the authored joints consistently outside articulations without emitting importer warnings. (#3092)
• Fix ModelBuilder.add_usd() silently ignoring authored Newton USD collision schemas when newton-usd-schemas is unavailable. USD import now fails clearly instead of continuing without the registered schema defaults required for SDF and hydroelastic configuration.
• Fix cable_cross_slide_table example stability so the cable-driven table reliably tracks its rectangular path and catches drift during regression runs.
• Fix the robot_policy example overflowing narrow-phase contact capacity. (#3463)
• Fix the recording example's contact gap so the recorded bodies settle on the ground. (#3500)
• Fix URDF package:// mesh fallback resolution without resolve-robotics-uri-py so package names only match full path components instead of unrelated directory-name substrings
• Fix TetMesh USD loading to infer unambiguous length-1 custom attributes as AttributeFrequency.ONCE, flatten indexed primvars, and omit uninferable attributes without dropping the soft body. ModelBuilder.add_usd() imports only registered TetMesh attributes using their declared frequencies. (#3228)
• Fix ModelBuilder.collapse_fixed_joints() crashing with IndexError when a mujoco:equality_constraint row omits optional fields (anchor, relpose) that carry defaults. (#3054)
• Fix ViewerGL.set_model() resetting headless/interactive camera and wind state when switching between models that use the same up-axis. (#2658)
• Fix bend force calculation error in Style3D solver
• Fix SolverSemiImplicit particle-particle contact evaluation by rebuilding Model.particle_grid before contact generation and accumulating contact forces into, rather than overwriting, particle_f. (#2848)

Removed

• Remove the non-canonical material:binding relationship fallback from USD material resolution; materials resolve exclusively through UsdShade's ComputeBoundMaterial. Prims that author a plain material:binding without applying MaterialBindingAPI still resolve (USD tolerates them with a warning), but assets relying on bare purpose-specific relationships only (e.g. material:binding:preview with no universal binding) or on binding targets that are not Material prims no longer resolve. Validate and repair such assets with usdchecker or usd-validation-nvidia. (#3350)
• Remove support for the legacy newton_actuators-style ModelBuilder.add_actuator(actuator_class, input_indices=...) signature; use add_actuator(controller_class, index=..., ...) with newton.actuators controllers (e.g. ControllerPD, ControllerPID) instead. (#3170)
• Remove the deprecated newton-actuators package dependency; all actuator functionality is built into newton.actuators. (#3170)
• Remove the deprecated state=None and refit_bvh arguments of SensorTiledCamera.update(); pass a State and refit BVHs explicitly via Model.bvh_refit_shapes() / Model.bvh_refit_particles() before rendering frames that change geometry. (#3171)
• Remove support for worlds_per_row=0 in SensorTiledCamera.flatten_*_to_rgba() (deprecated in 1.2.0); pass worlds_per_row=None for automatic layout (values below 1 now raise ValueError). (#3149)
• Remove the deprecated SensorTiledCamera 1.1 API surface: Config, RenderContext, render_context, image helper methods, and random color helpers; use RenderConfig, default_render_config, SensorTiledCamera.utils.*, and per-shape colors instead. (#3168)
• Remove the deprecated SensorRaycast; use SensorTiledCamera (SensorTiledCamera.utils.compute_camera_rays_pinhole() and create_depth_image_output() for single-camera depth) instead. (#3169)
• Remove the deprecated Viewer.update_shape_colors(); write to Model.shape_color directly instead. (#3161)
• Remove the deprecated max_worlds parameter of ViewerBase.set_model(); call ViewerBase.set_visible_worlds() after set_model() instead. (#3164)
• Remove body armature: drop ModelBuilder.default_body_armature, the armature parameter of ModelBuilder.add_link() and add_body(), and USD-authored body newton:armature (deprecated in 1.1.0); add any isotropic artificial inertia directly to inertia instead. All add_link() and add_body() parameters are now keyword-only. (#3153)
• Remove support for passing a Gaussian as the second positional argument to ModelBuilder.add_shape_gaussian() (deprecated in 1.1.0); pass it via the gaussian= keyword instead. (#3159)
• Remove the deprecated a, b, c parameters of ModelBuilder.add_shape_ellipsoid() (deprecated in 1.1.0); use rx, ry, rz instead. (#3157)
• Remove the deprecated Style3D CollisionHandler; use Collision instead. (#3133)
• Remove the deprecated implicit MPM collider_velocity_mode aliases 'finite_difference' and 'instantaneous' (deprecated in 1.1.0); use 'backward' and 'forward' instead. (#3167)
• Remove the deprecated and ignored rigid_enable_dahl_friction argument of SolverVBD; Dahl friction is auto-detected from model.vbd.dahl_eps_max / model.vbd.dahl_tau. (#3172)
• Remove the deprecated top-level Model.equality_constraint_* fields, ModelBuilder.equality_constraint_* fields, ModelBuilder.add_equality_constraint*() methods, Model.AttributeFrequency.EQUALITY_CONSTRAINT, and CustomAttribute.references="equality_constraint"; use model.mujoco.equality_constraint_*, ModelBuilder.add_custom_values(), and the "mujoco:equality_constraint" custom frequency instead. (#3296)

[1.3.0] - 2026-06-11

Added

• Add newton.use_coord_layout_targets opt-in flag exposing Model.joint_target_q / Control.joint_target_q shaped (joint_coord_count,) (matching joint_q) and joint_target_qd shaped (joint_dof_count,) (matching joint_qd); solvers, the actuator library, and ModelBuilder.finalize() honor the flag. Defaults to False for backwards compatibility; will flip in a future release. (#2965)
• Add joint_damping model attribute and JointDofConfig.damping for velocity-proportional damping that is always active. (#2304)
• Add SolverBase.reset() method for in-place solver state resets with optional world_mask and StateFlags; default implementation is a no-op. (#2657)
• Implement SolverMuJoCo.reset() to reset selected worlds: it resets State.joint_q / State.joint_qd to the model defaults (gated by StateFlags) and clears the per-world MuJoCo buffers that persist between steps (qacc_warmstart, qfrc_applied, xfrc_applied, act, ctrl), so a world recovers cleanly on the next step after a divergence (e.g. NaNs); accepts an optional world_mask. (#3062)
• Add StateFlags enum to control which state attributes are reset. (#2657)
• Add ModelFlags as the canonical name for model-change notification flags. (#2657)
• Add opt-in validate_mesh parameter to ModelBuilder.add_cloth_mesh(), ModelBuilder.add_soft_mesh(), and style3d.add_cloth_mesh() that warns on degenerate geometry; add public newton.utils.validate_triangle_mesh() and newton.utils.validate_tet_mesh() utilities
• Add edge-simplification options to Mesh.build_sdf() that drop near-coplanar internal edges from the mesh-edge set used by SDF-mesh contact generation: edge_lower_angle_threshold_rad (default 0.1°; pass a negative value to opt out and keep the full edge set), edge_upper_angle_threshold_rad, opt-in edge_box_absorption, and box half-extent controls edge_box_half_{normal,lateral} / edge_box_half_{normal,lateral}_rel. (#2894)
• Add ModelBuilder.ShapeConfig.sdf_padding and ModelBuilder.shape_sdf_padding for setting the per-shape SDF AABB padding [m] used when building primitive texture SDFs and deferred mesh SDFs
• Add contact_reduction_hashtable_size_factor to CollisionPipeline, NarrowPhase, and HydroelasticSDF.Config for increasing contact reduction hashtable capacity when fill/failure warnings appear. (#2978)
• Add Model.bvh_build_shapes(), Model.bvh_refit_shapes(), Model.bvh_build_particles(), and Model.bvh_refit_particles() for managing model BVHs, with optional bvh_constructor selection on the build methods. (#3039)
• Add functional newton.intersect_ray() shape query helper for composing custom raycast sensors. (#2971)
• Add Model.heightfield_count for the number of GeoType.HFIELD shapes in a model. (#3039)
• Document loop closure in the articulations concept page, covering the omit-from-add_articulation pattern and USD excludeFromArticulation with per-solver caveats
• Add model.mujoco.equality_constraint_objtype, _target_kind, and _target fields, recording the object kind a MuJoCo equality references and whether it was projected onto a native loop joint or mimic constraint for solver portability. (#2959)
• Add newton.actuators.SchemaNames exposing the canonical USD schema token constants used by parse_actuator_prim for actuator USD parsing
• Parse URDF <material> colors (inline <color rgba> and named material references) during import and apply them to ModelBuilder.shape_color for all shape types
• Add opt-in collapse_massless_fixed_root to URDF and MJCF importers to collapse massless fixed-root chains for maximal-coordinate solvers while preserving topology by default
• Parse NewtonSDFCollisionAPI attributes from USD in ModelBuilder.add_usd(), including the newton:hydroelasticEnabled toggle, absolute narrow band / margin, texture format, hydroelastic stiffness (newton:hydroelasticStiffness), and applied-API schema defaults. Hydroelastic configuration is folded into NewtonSDFCollisionAPI and opted into via newton:hydroelasticEnabled (default false). SDF generation is opt-in by applying the API; for primitive shapes the SDF is only built when hydroelastic is also enabled. (#2533)
• Add USD parsing for NewtonSiteAPI to mark shapes as sites
• Add USD parsing for NewtonMassAPI: shell mass model (newton:massModel), shell thickness (newton:shellThickness), and compact inertia tensor (newton:inertia). (#2951)
• Add USD parsing for contact response attributes (ke, kd, kf, ka) from NewtonMaterialAPI on bound materials. (#3005)
• Add ViewerGL.show_loading_splash() / ViewerGL.hide_loading_splash() displaying a stylized Newton's-cradle overlay while the GL viewer waits on Warp kernel compilation; raised automatically by newton.examples.init() for visible GL viewers
• Add an optional kernel_block_dim argument to SensorTiledCamera.update() for tuning the Warp ray-tracer's render_megakernel launch shape
• Add rec_id parameter to ViewerRerun for specifying the recording ID, enabling multiple processes to share a single Rerun recording
• Add ViewerRTX, a real-time ray-traced viewer powered by NVIDIA OVRTX. (#1861)
• Add edge overlay toggle (renderer.draw_edges) for wireframe visualization on top of solid geometry
• Add newton.utils.ColorSpace, color_srgb_to_linear(), color_linear_to_srgb(), and SensorTiledCamera.RenderConfig.output_color_space for color-space boundaries. (#2411)
• Add cable_cross_slide_table example demonstrating a cable-driven XY table
• Add robotics tutorial notebook covering ModelBuilder, solvers, CUDA graphs, IK, and pick-and-place
• Add rigid-soft contact example covering a rigid sphere dropping onto an XPBD tetrahedral soft grid

Changed

• Users of heightfield ray queries, newton.intersect_ray(), or sensor rendering should call Model.bvh_refit_shapes(state) after shape state changes. GeoType.HFIELD ray queries now use the mesh BVH built during ModelBuilder.finalize() instead of per-thread DDA grid traversal; only code manually launching internal raycast kernels is affected by the removed heightfield-specific kernel buffers. (#2971, #3039)
• Users who update shape or particle state after finalization should call Model.bvh_refit_shapes() or Model.bvh_refit_particles() before BVH-backed queries. ModelBuilder.finalize() now builds shape and particle BVHs automatically; use Model.bvh_build_shapes() and Model.bvh_build_particles() only when explicitly rebuilding, selecting a custom constructor, or working with manually populated models. (#3039)
• Users who relied on ModelBuilder.finalize() populating Mesh.sdf on shared Mesh instances should call Mesh.build_sdf() directly when reusable SDF data must live on the Mesh. The finalized model now retains deferred SDF data internally for contact generation; do not depend on Model.shape_sdf_index or Model.texture_sdf_data. (#2533)
• Users configuring SDF or hydroelastic options on convex-hull shapes should build and attach SDF data on the underlying Mesh with Mesh.build_sdf() instead. ModelBuilder.add_shape_convex_hull() (and any path producing GeoType.CONVEX_MESH) now raises ValueError if ShapeConfig.sdf_* or ShapeConfig.is_hydroelastic are set, matching add_shape_mesh(). (#2533)
• USD importer users who co-apply NewtonSDFCollisionAPI and NewtonMeshCollisionAPI on the same prim should expect a warning and SDF configuration to be used. The importer now treats these as independent collision representations, ignores physics:approximation on SDF prims with a warning, and ModelBuilder.approximate_meshes() raises ValueError for mesh-replacing methods (convex_hull, coacd, vhacd, bounding_box, bounding_sphere) when a target shape carries deferred SDF configuration or the HYDROELASTIC flag. (#2533)
• USD users with invalid or under-specified SDF configuration now get warnings and degraded imports instead of whole-import failures. A hydroelastic Mesh prim without an SDF source (no newton:sdfMaxResolution / newton:sdfTargetVoxelSize) imports as a plain mesh collider with hydroelastic disabled. An sdfMaxResolution not divisible by 8, an unknown sdfTextureFormat, and both sdfMaxResolution and sdfTargetVoxelSize authored on the same prim each warn with the prim path and fall back to defaults (sdfTargetVoxelSize takes precedence over sdfMaxResolution). The Python API path (ShapeConfig.validate()) still raises. (#2533)
• Users comparing SDF-mesh contact distances or normals may see small shifts below typical contact_threshold and shape_margin settings. The SDF-mesh narrow phase now uses hardware-filtered SDF texture sampling with centred-difference gradients; hydroelastic SDF sampling is unchanged. Pass a negative edge_lower_angle_threshold_rad (e.g. -1.0) to Mesh.build_sdf() to disable the new edge-simplification pass and reproduce the pre-optimisation behavior with the full edge set. (#2894)
• Support negative (mirrored) scale on mesh, convex hull, and SDF shapes, so a single Mesh instance can be shared across shapes with different signed scales without re-baking. (#2837)
• Users passing negative scale to symmetric primitive shapes (sphere, box, capsule, cylinder, ellipsoid, plane, gaussian) should apply mirrors through the shape transform (xform) instead if the sign matters. ModelBuilder.add_shape* now normalizes these negative scale components to abs() because the shapes are point-symmetric. (#2837)
• Users passing negative scale to cones or heightfields must now mirror cones through the shape xform and pre-mirror height data before passing positive heightfield scale. ModelBuilder.add_shape_cone() and heightfield shapes now reject negative scale components that were previously silently accepted and produced invalid geometry. (#2837)
• MJCF/USD import users who need the legacy MuJoCo equality-constraint arrays should pass convert_mjc_equality_constraints=False. MuJoCo equality constraints now convert to Newton loop joints and mimic constraints by default while preserving MuJoCo metadata for SolverMuJoCo round-trips. (#2959)
• Change SolverMuJoCo joint-limit jnt_solref conversion so Newton force-space joint_limit_ke / joint_limit_kd match the configured limit stiffness/damping at the joint limit instead of MuJoCo's acceleration-space default. The conversion uses MuJoCo's per-DOF dof_invweight0, so effective dynamics depend on asset mass/inertia. (#2610, #3132)
• SolverMuJoCo users with Newton-authored joint-limit gains should retune joint_limit_ke / joint_limit_kd per asset mass/inertia and timestep. The same numeric stiffness/damping can produce different dynamics than Newton 1.2, and previously damped assets may become underdamped or hit MuJoCo's timestep safety clamp. MJCF/USD-authored native mjc:solreflimit / model.mujoco.solreflimit values stay in raw MuJoCo mode (SOLREF_MODE_RAW) and are not rescaled; unauthored MJCF defaults stay in SOLREF_MODE_MJCF_DEFAULT until their Newton gains are edited. To keep native MuJoCo behavior, author/pass raw solreflimit, or set joint_limit_ke <= 0 or joint_limit_kd <= 0 to restore MuJoCo's default solreflimit = (0.02, 1.0). (#2610, #3132)
• Warn from SolverMuJoCo when a JointType.FREE joint has a non-world parent; MuJoCo requires free joints to attach directly to the world
• SolverKamino.reset() users should migrate state_out= calls to state= and pass reset targets by keyword, such as base_q=.... The method now resets in place on state, matches SolverBase.reset(), and no longer accepts beta state_out= or legacy positional reset-target compatibility. (#2657)
• Accept plain int flag bitmasks in solver reset and model-change notification APIs so users can define extension bits beyond StateFlags and ModelFlags. (#2657)
• Mark SolverVBD as experimental. (#3068)
• Mark SolverKamino as experimental. (#3065)
• Mark the actuator API as experimental in its docstring. (#3067)
• Mark the "sticky" contact-matching mode as experimental in its docstring. (#3067)
• SensorTiledCamera users who relied on previous linear-byte packed color and albedo outputs should pass RenderConfig(output_color_space=ColorSpace.LINEAR). Packed color and albedo now default to sRGB-encoded bytes so authored display colors render at the expected display brightness. (#2411)
• Auto-scale ViewerGL contact arrows, joint axes, and COM markers by Viewer.scene_scale; to approximate the previous fixed sizes after set_model(), set viewer.renderer.arrow_length_scale = 0.1 / viewer.scene_scale, viewer.renderer.joint_scale = 0.1 / viewer.scene_scale, and viewer.renderer.com_scale = 0.1 / viewer.scene_scale. (#2856)
• Make the ViewerGL left control panel movable (drag the title bar) and resizable (drag the bottom-right corner); a vertical scrollbar appears automatically when contents overflow and is operable with the mouse wheel or two-finger trackpad gestures. The initial dock-on-left position is unchanged. (#2926)
• Remove the cbor2 <6 dependency ceiling after updating recorder deserialization to accept mapping-like decoded containers
• Users configuring Warp logging should use Newton's --quiet flag or --warp-config log_level=... instead of legacy Warp verbose or quiet config keys. Newton now requires Warp 1.14 and configures Warp logging through warp.config.log_level. (#2900, #3046)
• Rename SensorContact sensing-object API names: sensing_obj_idx to sensing_indices, sensing_obj_type to sensing_type, sensing_obj_transforms to sensing_transforms, sensing_obj_bodies to sensing_bodies, and sensing_obj_shapes to sensing_shapes; the old names remain deprecated aliases for compatibility. (#3120)
• Bump newton-usd-schemas to >=0.3.1

Deprecated

• Users of joint target aliases should migrate Model.joint_target_pos / Control.joint_target_pos and Model.joint_target_vel / Control.joint_target_vel to joint_target_q / joint_target_qd. The legacy names emit a DeprecationWarning and raise AttributeError when newton.use_coord_layout_targets = True. Set that flag before building a model to switch joint_target_q to joint_coord_count shape (matching joint_q); the default False keeps the legacy joint_dof_count layout. ModelBuilder.joint_target_pos / ModelBuilder.joint_target_vel are now read-only deprecated aliases (the writable attributes are removed) — set per-axis targets via JointDofConfig.target_pos / target_vel or write directly to ModelBuilder.joint_target_q / joint_target_qd. (#2965)
• Actuator users should pass control_target_pos_attr="joint_target_q" (and the velocity counterpart) explicitly to adopt the future default now. The implicit Actuator default that resolves control_target_pos_attr / control_target_vel_attr to legacy joint_target_pos / joint_target_vel when newton.use_coord_layout_targets is False is deprecated and will switch to joint_target_q / joint_target_qd in a future release. (#2965)
• Deprecate SensorTiledCamera.utils.assign_checkerboard_material_to_all_shapes() in favor of SensorTiledCamera.utils.assign_checkerboard_material(shape_indices=...).
• Deprecate SolverNotifyFlags in favor of ModelFlags; migrate calls such as SolverNotifyFlags.MODEL_PROPERTIES to ModelFlags.MODEL_PROPERTIES. (#2657)
• SolverVBD.register_custom_attributes() users who want Dahl cable friction should pass dahl_defaults_enabled=False and explicitly author positive model.vbd.dahl_eps_max and model.vbd.dahl_tau values instead of relying on registered default values. Implicit positive Dahl defaults are deprecated. (#2921)
• Deprecate Model.mujoco.dof_passive_damping in favor of Model.joint_damping; MuJoCo damping import now populates Model.joint_damping and the old namespaced attribute remains a warning alias. (#2304)
• Deprecate the ls_parallel argument of SolverMuJoCo; parallel line search is being removed from mujoco_warp. Remove ls_parallel from solver construction. (#3096)
• USD authors should put contact response attributes on bound NewtonMaterialAPI materials instead of shape prim custom attributes. newton:contact_ke/newton:contact_kd/newton:contact_kf/newton:contact_ka on shape prims are deprecated in favor of newton:contactStiffness/newton:contactDamping/newton:contactFrictionGain/newton:contactAdhesion on the bound material. (#3005)
• USD authors should put material-level contact stiffness/damping on bound NewtonMaterialAPI materials, or use per-shape mjc:solref (MjcGeomAPI) when per-shape MuJoCo settings are needed. Material-level mjc:solref is deprecated in favor of newton:contactStiffness/newton:contactDamping on the bound material. (#3005)
• Deprecate module-level BVH helpers newton.geometry.build_bvh_shape(), refit_bvh_shape(), build_bvh_particle(), and refit_bvh_particle() in favor of Model.bvh_build_shapes(), Model.bvh_refit_shapes(), Model.bvh_build_particles(), and Model.bvh_refit_particles(). (#3039)
• Deprecate Model.has_heightfields in favor of Model.heightfield_count; use model.heightfield_count > 0 for boolean checks. (#3039)
• Users reading SDF.texture_block_coords should stop depending on it. The attribute now always returns None and will be removed in a future release because the hydroelastic broadphase derives block coordinates arithmetically from each SDF's coarse-texture dimensions. (#2701)
• Users reading Model.sdf_block_coords and Model.sdf_index2blocks should stop depending on these internal broadphase caches. Both attributes are now lazily recomputed from each SDF's coarse-texture dimensions (matching the new broadphase semantics) and will be removed in a future release. (#2701, #3072)
• Users reading public SDF storage attributes should stop depending on them directly. Public access to Model.shape_sdf_index, Model.texture_sdf_data, Model.texture_sdf_coarse_textures, Model.texture_sdf_subgrid_textures, and Model.texture_sdf_subgrid_start_slots is deprecated because these are implementation details of the SDF contact pipeline. The public aliases keep working during the deprecation window and will be removed in a future release. (#2701, #3072)

Removed

• Remove SensorContact.net_force (deprecated in 1.1.0); use SensorContact.total_force and SensorContact.force_matrix instead. (#2945)
• Remove SensorContact(include_total=...) (deprecated in 1.1.0); use SensorContact(measure_total=...) instead. (#2945)
• Remove SensorContact.sensing_objs (deprecated in 1.1.0); use SensorContact.sensing_indices and SensorContact.sensing_type instead. (#2945)
• Remove SensorContact.counterparts and SensorContact.reading_indices (deprecated in 1.1.0); use SensorContact.counterpart_indices and SensorContact.counterpart_type instead. (#2945)
• Remove SensorContact.shape (deprecated in 1.1.0); use total_force.shape / force_matrix.shape instead. (#2945)
• Remove SensorContact.ObjectType enum (deprecated in 1.1.0); use the sensing_type and counterpart_type attributes instead. (#2945)
• Remove internal raycast_kernel_no_hfield; raycast code now uses raycast_kernel with heightfield raycasting routed through the mesh BVH path. (#2971)
• Remove the examples helper newton.examples.compute_world_offsets; use ModelBuilder.replicate() when duplicating a model, or newton.utils.compute_world_offsets(world_count, spacing, up_axis=...) if you only need placement offsets. (#3075)

Fixed

• Fix SensorTiledCamera not rendering heightfield (HFIELD) shapes, which were missing from the render BVH. Heightfields are now rendered through the existing mesh path (they are triangulated wp.Mesh shapes), which also resolves a tiled-camera render-performance regression caused by the unused heightfield branch lowering the render kernel's GPU occupancy. (#3088)
• Fix hydroelastic SDF contact surfaces dropping the central region under deep interpenetration. The broadphase used to skip subgrids whose centers were deeper than the SDF narrow band, leaving a hole in the contact patch when overlap exceeded the narrow-band thickness. Broadphase now visits every subgrid in the SDF coarse grid (block coordinates are derived arithmetically from per-shape SDF coarse-texture dimensions); sampling at far-inside locations is correct because the coarse SDF is dense and accurate everywhere. On-disk SDF caches written by earlier versions are transparently re-cooked on first load (_sdf_cache.CACHE_FORMAT_VERSION bumped to 2). (#2701)
• Fix mesh and convex-mesh contact sign classification for watertight meshes with nearby opposing surfaces or inconsistent triangle winding. (#3004)
• Fix ModelBuilder.collapse_fixed_joints() producing a NaN center of mass when collapsing joints between zero-mass bodies
• Fix USD import losing authored negative scales on shape and parent xforms, so mirrored primitives and meshes are now imported with the correct signed scale. (#2936)
• Respect USD color-space metadata for scalar material colors and convert linear-authored USD color textures to display space when loading them. (#2411)
• Fix USD import of orphaned body-to-world fixed joints not accounting for ancestor xform offsets, so pinned bodies now FK to the correct world pose (env origin + spawn xform). (#2974)
• Fix USD import of revolute and D6-angular joint limit_ke / limit_kd from mjc:solreflimit being over-scaled by ~57x. (#2736)
• Fix SolverMuJoCo passing numpy.bool_ scalars for the mocap and actgravcomp parameters when building the MuJoCo spec, causing a DeprecationWarning under NumPy 2.2 and silent behavioral breakage under NumPy 2.5 where boolean scalars are no longer interpreted as integer indices. (#3098)
• Fix MJCF xyaxes parsing to treat the second vector as Y and derive Z from X cross Y
• Fix SolverMuJoCo returning State.joint_qd in world frame for root FREE joints with non-identity parent_xform, violating the documented parent-frame contract and corrupting derived body_qd. (#2871)
• Fix MJCF joint damping attribute being ignored by SolverFeatherstone
• Fix SolverMuJoCo generated MuJoCo joint names for multi-axis D6 joints to avoid duplicate names
• Fix SolverMuJoCo ball-joint frame conversion: joint_q and position-target quaternions were applied in the wrong basis when child_xform had a non-identity rotation, and joint_qd / velocity targets / applied / actuator torques were applied and read back in the wrong basis whenever the ball was away from its rest pose. (#2981)
• Fix SolverMuJoCo to preserve authored zero-valued USD mjc:solreflimit values as raw MuJoCo data and avoid writing limit solref values to unlimited joints in saved MJCF
• Honor authored mujoco.solreflimit_mode even when a non-zero mujoco.solreflimit is also present, so the explicit mode (force-space or raw) is authoritative
• Fix SolverMuJoCo CPU backend overwriting mj_model.body_iquat with Newton's eigendecomposition result on every BODY_INERTIAL_PROPERTIES notify; the compiled principal-axes basis is now preserved, fixing single-contact box equilibrium (incorrect normal force) and stiff WELD-loop instabilities (Nan, Inf or huge value in QACC) caused by basis ambiguity on repeated eigenvalues. (#3018)
• Fix SolverMuJoCo CPU backend dynamics for asymmetric MJCF diaginertia models whose principal moments are reordered during Newton/MJWarp synchronization
• Fix SolverMuJoCo honoring force-space shape_material_ke / shape_material_kd for contacts (use_mujoco_contacts=False); authored mjc:solref is preserved via new mujoco.solref / mujoco.solref_mode per-shape custom attributes. Force-space scaling is unsupported on use_mujoco_contacts=True and the MuJoCo CPU backend. (#2964)
• Fix MJCF importer rejecting MuJoCo's one-value solreflimit/solref shorthand emitted by mujoco.MjSpec.to_xml() for default-valued joints, which broke SolverMuJoCo(save_to_mjcf=...) round-trips
• Fix eval_fk() overwriting VBD-simulated JointType.CABLE body poses
• Fix SolverVBD custom attribute setup so vbd:joint_is_hard can be authored without implicitly enabling Dahl cable friction by calling SolverVBD.register_custom_attributes(..., dahl_defaults_enabled=False)
• Fix SolverKamino contact anchors being shifted off the geometry surface by ShapeConfig.margin, which biased friction
• Fix rigid-rigid friction in SolverVBD for contacts with nonzero rigid_contact_offset0/rigid_contact_offset1
• Fix SolverXPBD body_parent_f reporting to include Control.joint_f contributions and accumulate multiple inbound joint contributions, matching the SolverMuJoCo and SolverFeatherstone convention
• Fix SolverXPBD tetrahedral constraints reading static model activations instead of runtime control activations
• Fix SolverXPBD tetrahedral constraints ignoring FEM material stiffness and damping
• Fix ViewerFile playback dropping namespaced custom attributes (e.g. model.mujoco.geom_solimp) when restoring into a fresh Model
• Fix ViewerGL GUI rendering at half size on HiDPI / Retina displays by scaling the ImGui style, fonts, sidebar width, and log_image window/tile/spacing constants with pyglet's window.scale (with framebuffer-to-window ratio as a fallback). DPI changes are tracked at runtime via the pyglet on_scale event so the GUI follows the window across displays with different scaling. (#2926)
• Fix ground grid clipping in the Viser renderer
• Fix brick_stacking example contact gaps to avoid oversized contact envelopes around the robot, table, and ground
• Fix example_softbody_gift emitting spurious non-manifold edge warnings caused by mismatched 5-tet diagonals across adjacent cubes in the soft body mesh
• Fix basic_conveyor example emitting a spurious inertia validation warning at finalize

[1.2.1] - 2026-06-04

Added

• Add ArticulationView.joint_labels, link_labels (aliased as body_labels), and shape_labels exposing the full template-articulation labels alongside the existing leaf-only *_names, so callers can disambiguate selected entries whose leaf names collide.

Fixed

• Fix mesh-convex and heightfield-convex contacts missing when shapes are separated by margin but still within the contact envelope.
• Fix ArticulationView link selections for closed-loop joints so BODY-frequency accessors expose each physical body once.
• Fix USD visual mesh imports to preserve face-material UsdGeom.Subset colors and textures by splitting material subsets into separate render meshes; collision/physics import behavior is unchanged

[1.2.0] - 2026-05-12

Added

• Add linear HDR color output support to SensorTiledCamera via hdr_color_image.
• Add composable actuator subsystem with pluggable Controller (ControllerPD, ControllerPID, ControllerNeuralMLP, ControllerNeuralLSTM), Clamping (ClampingMaxEffort, ClampingDCMotor, ClampingPositionBased), and Delay components; supports per-DOF delays, CUDA graph capture, and masked environment reset
• Add heatmap rendering for scalar arrays logged through ViewerGL.log_array()
• Add Blender-style orbit, pan, and dolly controls to the GL viewer using middle-mouse drag combinations
• Add SolverXPBD.update_contacts() to populate contacts.force with per-contact spatial forces (linear force and torque) derived from XPBD constraint impulses
• Add body_parent_f extended state attribute support to SolverXPBD so it populates per-body incoming joint wrenches in world frame at the body's COM (matches SolverMuJoCo's convention; values are approximate due to XPBD's relaxation and non-momentum-conserving nature)
• Add body_parent_f extended state attribute support to SolverFeatherstone populated directly from the RNEA backward pass (per-body net spatial wrench translated to the body's COM, matching the SolverMuJoCo convention)
• Add public newton.geometry.build_bvh_shape(), build_bvh_particle(), refit_bvh_shape(), and refit_bvh_particle() helpers for managing model BVHs
• Raise process priority automatically in --benchmark mode for more stable measurements; add --realtime for maximum priority.
• Import per-shape authored color from USD stages into ModelBuilder.shape_color
• Add TRIANGLE_PRISM support-function type for heightfield triangles, extruding 1 m along the heightfield's local -Z so GJK/MPR naturally resolves shapes on the back side
• Add ViewerGL.log_scalar() for live scalar time-series plots in the viewer
• Add Mesh.is_watertight property (cached) that reports whether every geometric edge is shared by exactly two triangles
• Add HydroelasticSDF.Config.mc_edge_clamp_min to expose the marching-cubes edge-interpolation clamp; default 0.02 matches the previous hard-coded value. Set to 0.0 to disable the clamp and recover faithful contact-surface dynamics for threading-style scenarios (#2702)
• Add deterministic flag to CollisionPipeline and NarrowPhase for GPU-thread-scheduling-independent contact ordering via radix sort and deterministic fingerprint tiebreaking in contact reduction
• Add shape_pairs_max override on CollisionPipeline to cap the SAP/NXN broad-phase candidate-pair buffer below the worst-case N*(N-1)/2 per-world bound, avoiding multi-GB allocations on large sparse scenes (a too-small value triggers a runtime overflow warning)
• Add fast parity-based SDF construction path for watertight meshes in SDF.create_from_mesh, using wp.mesh_query_point_sign_parity instead of winding numbers; selected via the new sign_method argument ("auto" — the default — picks parity when Mesh.is_watertight is true, or "parity" / "winding" to force either strategy)
• Add Viewer.log_image() for displaying single or batched images in ViewerGL; other backends inherit a no-op. Also add SensorTiledCamera.utils.to_rgba_from_color(), to_rgba_from_normal(), to_rgba_from_depth(), and to_rgba_from_shape_index() (hash palette or caller-provided RGB lookup) adapters producing output consumable by log_image().
• Add on-disk caching of cooked texture-based SDFs via the new cache_dir argument on SDF.create_from_mesh and Mesh.build_sdf. Cached entries are content-addressed by mesh and build parameters, written atomically as a single uncompressed .npz, and versioned via CACHE_FORMAT_VERSION so format changes invalidate stale caches transparently
• Enable CPU execution of the collision pipeline, including mesh–mesh and mesh–heightfield SDF contacts and contact reduction (reduce_contacts) that were previously CUDA-only, by replacing the CUDA __shared__ fast paths in sdf_contact.py, multicontact.py, and collision_core.py with portable wp.tile_stack / wp.tile_mesh_query_aabb primitives. CPU runs now execute the same kernels as CUDA; the previous "NarrowPhase running on CPU: mesh-mesh contacts will be skipped" warning is no longer emitted.
• Add ViewerBase.log_arrows() for arrow rendering (wide line + arrowhead) in the GL viewer with a dedicated geometry shader
• Add frame-to-frame contact matching via CollisionPipeline(contact_matching=...) with modes "latest" (populates contacts.rigid_contact_match_index) and "sticky" (experimental; additionally replays previous-frame contact geometry on matched contacts — the sticky update strategy may change without warning). Optional contact_report=True exposes new/broken contact index lists on Contacts.
• Add VBD rigid-contact warm-starting via rigid_contact_history, backed by Contacts.rigid_contact_match_index from CollisionPipeline(contact_matching="latest").
• Add VBD hard/soft controls for body-body contacts and structural joint slots, including rigid_contact_hard, SolverVBD.set_joint_constraint_mode(), and SolverVBD.JointSlot
• Add AVBD contact/joint alpha overrides and linear/angular beta overrides to SolverVBD for stabilization and penalty-ramping control
• Add enable_multiccd parameter to SolverMuJoCo for multi-CCD contact generation (up to 4 contact points per geom pair)
• Warn when SolverMuJoCo detects installed mujoco or mujoco-warp versions that do not satisfy pyproject.toml requirements
• Support <joint type="ball"/> in the MJCF importer, and preserve authored damping, stiffness, and frictionloss when exporting ball joints to MuJoCo specs (previously silently dropped)
• Add ViewerViser.log_scalar() for live scalar time-series plots via uPlot
• Honor UsdGeomImageable visibility (including inherited invisible) on USD prims imported via ModelBuilder.add_usd(); visual shapes, gaussian splats, and collider shapes are imported with ShapeFlags.VISIBLE cleared when the prim is effectively invisible, while collision behavior is preserved
• Add import of UsdGeom.TetMesh prims as soft meshes through ModelBuilder.add_usd()
• Add site-targeted actuator support to MuJoCo solver
• Add USD parsing support for equality constraints based on the MjcEquality schema
• Add more solver options to implicit MPM: gs-soa (or gauss-seidel-soa) for improved memory coalescing, gs-batched (or gauss-seidel-batched) merging GS colors with Jacobi-style mass-split parallelism, plus cr (Conjugate Residual) and gmres linear solver options.
• Add frame-by-frame step support to ViewerGL: press . while paused to advance one simulation frame
• Add ViewerBase.should_step() — call once per frame to determine whether the simulation loop should advance; returns True when not paused.
• Add Kamino-specific simulation examples in newton/examples/kamino
• Add per-mesh color override to ViewerBase.log_mesh() for tinting individual meshes without authoring per-vertex colors
• Add per-mesh roughness and metallic PBR overrides to ViewerBase.log_mesh()

Changed

• Use pre-computed local AABB for CONVEX_MESH shapes in compute_shape_aabbs, avoiding a per-frame support-function AABB computation
• Build mesh SDFs via the texture-based sparse path only; sample via SDF.texture_data instead of SDF.sparse_volume / SDF.coarse_volume.
• Change implicit MPM default solver from "gs" to "auto", which selects "gs" for trilinear bases and "gs-batched" for higher-order ones. Set solver="gs" explicitly to restore the previous behavior.
• Change SolverImplicitMPM.Config.solver warmstart syntax from +-separated strings to ordered sequences; use solver=("cg", "gauss-seidel") instead of solver="cg+gauss-seidel".
• Change implicit MPM default collider_basis from "Q1" to "S2" for improved contact quality; set collider_basis="Q1" explicitly to restore the previous behavior.
• Change GL viewer scroll to dolly toward the orbit pivot; use Ctrl+scroll for FOV zoom
• Render all GL viewer lines (joints, contacts, wireframes) as geometry-shader quads instead of GL_LINES for uniform width across zoom levels and non-square viewports
• Adjust grouping of reset, step, and pause controls so they appear together
• Bump Pillow floor to >=11.3.0
• Bump jupyterlab lower bound to >=4.5.7 to pick up the fix for CVE-2026-40171
• Replace ModelBuilder.add_actuator(actuator_class, input_indices=..., output_indices=..., **kwargs) with ModelBuilder.add_actuator(controller_class, index=..., clamping=[...], delay_steps=..., pos_index=..., **ctrl_kwargs) where each call registers a single DOF
• Change ArticulationView.get_actuator_parameter(actuator, name) and set_actuator_parameter(actuator, name, values) to require a component argument identifying the owning Controller, Clamping, or Delay instance: get_actuator_parameter(actuator, actuator.controller, "kp")
• Update default environment map texture in GL viewer (source: https://polyhaven.com/a/brown_photostudio_02)
• Remove the implicit-MPM rasterized collider's reliance on Warp's warp.fem module (behavior unchanged)
• Replace the StVK VBD triangle membrane material with the stable Neo-Hookean form (Smith et al. 2018, adapted to 2D shells). The upstream two-constraint Rayleigh damping model is preserved unchanged
• Bump mujoco and mujoco-warp dependencies to ~=3.8.0 (mujoco-warp requires >=3.8.0.3)
• Bump GitPython lower bound to >=3.1.47 to pick up the fix for GHSA-x2qx-6953-8485 (multi_options argument injection in Repo.clone_from)
• Bump open3d floor to >=0.19.0
• Bump meshio floor to >=5.3.5; 5.3.0 calls np.string_ which was removed in NumPy 2.0
• Bump newton-usd-schemas to >=0.2.0 introducing new experimental actuator schemas & re-aligning friction defaults
• Restrict usd-core to <26.5 to avoid deprecation warnings introduced in 26.5
• Require explicit SensorTiledCamera BVH lifecycle management instead of implicit camera maintenance: call newton.geometry.build_bvh_shape() / build_bvh_particle() once after setup, then refit_bvh_shape() / refit_bvh_particle() before rendering frames that change geometry
• Increase conveyor rail roughness in example_basic_conveyor to reduce mirror-like reflections
• Remove visual-only procedural terrain from example_robot_anymal_c_walk
• Migrate all raycast logic to geometry.raycast, all raycast functions now return distance and normal information
• Disable process reuse in the test runner on multi-GPU systems to prevent CUDA errors from cascading across test suites, keeping process reuse enabled on single-GPU systems for faster throughput
• Default python -m newton.examples with no argument to launch basic_pendulum; use --list to print available examples
• Reduce default stretch_stiffness from 1.0e9 to 1.0e5 in add_joint_cable(), add_rod(), and add_rod_graph()
• Treat stretch_stiffness and bend_stiffness in add_rod() and add_rod_graph() as direct per-joint stiffness values, matching add_joint_cable() and other joint stiffness APIs
• VBD solver uses augmented-Lagrangian hard constraints for body-body contacts by default (rigid_contact_hard=True)
• Reduce collision-pipeline overhead in SolverMuJoCo via incremental contact conversion when the contact set is unchanged (~6× speedup on example_robot_anymal_d with 4096 worlds)

Deprecated

• Deprecate the top-level Model.equality_constraint_* arrays and Model.equality_constraint_count, the ModelBuilder.equality_constraint_* accumulators, ModelBuilder.add_equality_constraint{,_connect,_weld,_joint}(), and the Model.AttributeFrequency.EQUALITY_CONSTRAINT enum, in favor of the namespaced model.mujoco.equality_constraint_* fields (custom attributes on the "mujoco:equality_constraint" frequency). Migrate reads and writes to model.mujoco.equality_constraint_*, and construct rows via ModelBuilder.add_custom_values(**{"mujoco:equality_constraint_*": ...}). The deprecated names forward to the namespace during the deprecation window and will be removed in a future release.
• Deprecate SensorRaycast in favor of SensorTiledCamera; migrate to SensorTiledCamera.utils.compute_camera_rays_pinhole() and create_depth_image_output() for single-camera depth rendering — see the SensorRaycast class docstring for a complete migration example
• Deprecate and ignore rigid_enable_dahl_friction in SolverVBD; Dahl friction is now auto-detected from model attributes (model.vbd.dahl_eps_max / model.vbd.dahl_tau)
• Deprecate newton-actuators package dependency; all actuator functionality is now built into newton.actuators. The dependency is kept for backward compatibility and will be removed in a future release; migrate imports from newton_actuators to newton.actuators

Fixed

• Fix remesh_convex_hull raising QhullError on degenerate (coincident, collinear, or coplanar) point clouds; it now returns a zero-volume fallback mesh with a UserWarning, raises ValueError on empty input, and retries Qhull with QJ joggle as a last resort on the 3D path
• Fix narrow-phase CPU launches using GPU-sized block dimensions with kernels that observe wp.block_dim() == 1, avoiding out-of-bounds tile and strided-loop indexing until Warp GH-1413 is fixed
• Fix ViewerGL Step button remaining clickable while the simulation is running; the button is now greyed out when not paused
• Fix ViewerGL Plots window opening on top of the Performance Stats overlay by anchoring its default position to the bottom-right corner; user-dragged positions persisted in imgui.ini are unaffected
• Fix the example viewer's Reset button discarding user-provided CLI options (e.g. --world-count) and rebuilding the example with parser defaults instead
• Fix SolverMuJoCo Newton-contact conversion to use geometry-surface contact anchors
• Fix ModelBuilder.finalize() crashing with 3+ articulations after collapse_fixed_joints() reordered articulation_start and dropped per-articulation metadata
• Fix Sphinx docs builds to auto-discover bundled pypandoc_binary pandoc so notebook tutorials build without manual PATH configuration
• Fix SolverStyle3D initialization to precompute its fixed PD matrix from the finalized model
• Fix connect constraint anchor computation to account for joint reference positions when SolverMuJoCo is the chosen solver.
• Fix joint-synthesized CONNECT constraint anchors not updating when dof_ref or joint_X_p changes at runtime via notify_model_changed()
• Fix WELD constraint data corruption when a model contains both FIXED and revolute/ball loop joints
• Fix SolverMuJoCo passing non-zero geom/pair margins to mujoco_warp.put_model(), which fails when NATIVECCD is enabled. Margins are forced to zero when MuJoCo handles collisions (use_mujoco_contacts=True); the Newton collision pipeline (use_mujoco_contacts=False) is unchanged
• Fix SolverMuJoCo failing to compile planar mesh colliders with MuJoCo's convex-hull path when use_mujoco_contacts=False; use MuJoCo contacts only with non-planar mesh colliders, primitive planes, or thick proxy geometry
• Fix GPU illegal-memory-access in SolverMuJoCo Newton-contacts fast path when notify_model_changed(BODY_INERTIAL_PROPERTIES | JOINT_DOF_PROPERTIES | MODEL_PROPERTIES) was called between substeps (e.g. mass randomization in IsaacLab), or when the bound Contacts instance / MJWarp naconmax changed without invalidating the cached tid_to_cid mapping. The fast path is now invalidated on any property notify that affects cached MJWarp contact fields, and bounds-checks cid against naconmax defensively
• Fix State.assign not copying namespaced extended and custom state attributes
• Fix mesh-convex back-face contacts generating inverted normals that trap shapes inside meshes and cause solver divergence (NaN)
• Fix triangle-mesh-vs-convex collisions silently dropping all contacts under non-uniform (and even large uniform) mesh scale: the BVH AABB query in mesh_vs_convex_midphase is now performed in unscaled mesh-local space (matching the BVH built over mesh.points), with the per-axis contact gap converted accordingly. Previously the query was performed in scaled mesh-local space, so any convex shape whose unscaled-space AABB lay outside the BVH bounds would receive 0 triangles and 0 contacts.
• Fix finite plane geometry 2x too large in collision, bounding sphere, and raytrace sensor
• Fix MPR convergence failure on large and extreme-aspect-ratio mesh triangles by projecting the starting point onto the triangle nearest the convex center
• Fix MPR/GJK reporting wrong contacts for CONVEX_MESH shapes whose authoring origin lies outside the hull, and tighten heightfield-vs-convex midphase to use the convex's local AABB instead of an origin-centered bounding sphere
• Fix O(W²·S²) memory explosion in CollisionPipeline shape-pair buffer allocation for NXN and SAP broad phase modes by computing per-world pair counts instead of a global N²
• Fix non-determinism in CollisionPipeline(contact_matching="sticky") where the matcher's atomic_min claim tie-break used the unsorted narrow-phase thread id (which wp.atomic_add makes non-deterministic) instead of the contact's sort key, so two runs of the same scene could pick different winners and diverge across frames
• Fix the deterministic narrow-phase sort buffer being sized to the broad-phase candidate-pair bound (N*(N-1)/2 per world for NXN/SAP) instead of rigid_contact_max, which wasted multi-GB of VRAM on scenes with thousands of shapes
• Fix SensorRaycast ignoring PLANE geometry
• Fix nut_bolt_hydro example threading regression where some nuts were pinned in static friction; nuts now thread reliably down the bolt under both MuJoCo and XPBD solvers (#2702)
• Fix VRAM leak when resetting examples that allocate large GPU state (e.g. diffsim_bear)
• Fix SensorRaycast and viewer picking ignoring HFIELD (heightfield) geometry
• Fix SensorTiledCamera textured albedo output rendering flat colors when color and normal outputs are disabled
• Fix URDF Collada visual meshes dropping diffuse texture bindings
• Fix contacts_rj45_plug example crashing on reset
• Fix SolverMuJoCo dependency version-mismatch warning being silently skipped when Newton is installed from a wheel
• Fix ViewerGL.log_image() windows persisting across example-browser switches and failing to re-open on re-entry after manual close, by clearing the image logger in ViewerGL.clear_model()
• Fix ModelBuilder.add_shape_heightfield scale being ignored by narrow-phase collision and raycast
• Fix collision_filter_parent silently ignored on joints to world (parent=-1); now honored for all add_joint_* methods, with add_joint_fixed(parent=-1, ...) defaulting to filter child shapes against world-static shapes
• Fix multi-world qfrc_actuator conversion using the wrong body center of mass for worlds with worldid > 0
• Fix SolverMuJoCo.__init__ time scaling with world_count × actuators_per_world instead of actuators_per_world by vectorizing the template-world filter for site-targeted actuators
• Fix compressed tets in evaluate_volumetric_neo_hookean_force_and_hessian producing an indefinite Hessian by clamping the cofactor-derivative coefficient to max(0, s), removing a contribution that could corrupt the VBD inner solve
• Fix SDF hydroelastic broadphase scatter kernel using a grid-stride loop with binary search instead of per-pair thread launch
• Fix box support-map sign flips from quaternion rotation noise (~1e-14) producing invalid GJK/MPR contacts for face-touching boxes with non-trivial base rotations
• Fix USD import of multi-DOF joints from MuJoCo-converted assets where multiple revolute joints between the same two bodies caused false cycle detection; merge them into D6 joints with correct DOF label mapping for MjcActuator target resolution
• Fix USD MjcActuator import so position and velocity actuators populate Newton's joint target arrays and can be driven via Control.joint_target_pos / Control.joint_target_vel
• Fix MJCF importer creating finite planes from MuJoCo visual half-sizes instead of infinite planes
• Fix USD custom-frequency parsing to respect ModelBuilder.add_usd(root_path=...), avoiding rows from sibling subtrees
• Fix USD import of joint limit stiffness/damping from MjcJointAPI: SchemaResolverMjc now reads the schema-correct mjc:solreflimit attribute instead of the generic mjc:solref, which was never authored on joints
• Fix MJCF importer in compiler.angle="degree" mode: (1) stop multiplying joint damping/stiffness by 180/π (MuJoCo stores these in N·m·s/rad and N·m/rad regardless of angle); (2) stop deg2rad-scaling the default ±MAXVAL sentinel for joints without an explicit range=, which was turning unlimited hinges into bounded joints with ~1.75e8 rad range
• Fix MJCF importer ignoring explicit mass= on visual geoms loaded via parse_visuals=True; authored visual-only mass now contributes to body mass and inertia like visual-only density already does
• Fix ViewerViser mesh popping artifacts caused by viser's automatic LOD simplification creating holes in complex geometry
• Fix ViewerViser notebook recording playback to load the matching browser client from the installed viser package and bind the playback HTTP server to loopback only
• Fix rendering of planes in ViewerViser as finite grids of line segments to prevent flickering artifacts
• Fix degenerate zero-area triangles in SDF marching-cubes isosurface extraction by clamping edge interpolation away from cube corners and guarding against near-zero cross products
• Fix multi-world coordinate conversion using the wrong body center of mass for replicated worlds
• Fix MJCF importer ignoring <default><equality/></default> attribute defaults (e.g. solref, solimp) for <connect>/<weld>/<joint> equality constraints
• Remove incorrect body-level mjc:damping -> rigid_body_linear_damping mapping from SchemaResolverMjc; mjc:damping is defined on MjcJointAPI, not on bodies
• Fix target_voxel_size being silently ignored on the texture-SDF path of SDF.create_from_mesh() and on the primitive-mesh path in ModelBuilder; the requested voxel resolution is now honored end-to-end and matches the sparse-SDF path
• Fix material-combination inconsistency in the Newton-to-mujoco-warp contact converter so combined friction / solref / solimp values match native MuJoCo
• Fix eq_objtype mismatch for joint equality and mimic constraints in SolverMuJoCo so compiled models match native MuJoCo XML behavior
• Fix implicit-MPM rheology solver launch-dim handling under warp-lang 1.13's templated launch_bounds (formerly produced out-of-bounds reads)
• Fix SolverKamino.reset clobbering q_j_p, q_j, and dq_j for worlds outside world_mask when joint_q/joint_u targets were provided. The previous unmasked writes broke TWOPI revolute-joint angle unwrapping after partial-mask resets.

[1.1.0] - 2026-04-13

Added

• Add repeatable --warp-config KEY=VALUE CLI option for overriding warp.config attributes when running examples
• Add 3D texture-based SDF, replacing NanoVDB volumes in the mesh-mesh collision pipeline for improved performance and CPU compatibility.
• Parse URDF joint limit effort="..." values and propagate them to imported revolute and prismatic joint effort_limit settings
• Add --benchmark [SECONDS] flag to examples for headless FPS measurement with warmup
• Interactive example browser in the GL viewer with tree-view navigation and switch/reset support
• Add TetMesh class and USD loading API for tetrahedral mesh geometry
• Support kinematic bodies in VBD solver
• Add brick stacking example
• Add box pyramid example and ASV benchmark for dense convex-on-convex contacts
• Add plotting example showing how to access and visualize per-step simulation diagnostics
• Add exposure property to GL renderer
• Add snap_to argument to ViewerGL.log_gizmo() to snap gizmos to a target world transform when the user releases them
• Expose gizmo_is_using attribute to detect whether a gizmo is actively being dragged
• Add per-axis gizmo filtering via translate/rotate parameters on log_gizmo
• Add conceptual overview and MuJoCo Warp integration primer to collision documentation
• Add configurable velocity basis for implicit MPM (velocity_basis, default "Q1") with GIMP quadrature option (integration_scheme="gimp")
• Add plastic viscosity, dilatancy, hardening and softening rate as per-particle MPM material properties (mpm:viscosity, mpm:dilatancy, mpm:hardening_rate, mpm:softening_rate)
• Add MPM beam twist, snow ball, and viscous coiling examples
• Add support for textures in SensorTiledCamera via Config.enable_textures
• Add enable_ambient_lighting and enable_particles options to SensorTiledCamera.Config
• Add SensorTiledCamera.utils.convert_ray_depth_to_forward_depth() to convert ray-distance depth to forward (planar) depth
• Add newton.geometry.compute_offset_mesh() for extracting offset surface meshes from any collision shape, and a viewer toggle to visualize gap + margin wireframes in the GL viewer
• Add differentiable rigid contacts (experimental) with respect to body poses via CollisionPipeline when requires_grad=True
• Add per-shape display colors via ModelBuilder.shape_color, Model.shape_color, and color= on ModelBuilder.add_shape_*; mesh shapes fall back to Mesh.color when available and viewers honor runtime Model.shape_color updates
• Add ModelBuilder.inertia_tolerance to configure the eigenvalue positivity and triangle inequality threshold used during inertia correction in finalize()
• Add ViewerBase.set_visible_worlds() for runtime control of which worlds are rendered, replacing the static max_worlds parameter
• Add compute_normals and compute_uvs optional arguments to Mesh.create_heightfield() and Mesh.create_terrain()
• Pin newton-assets and mujoco_menagerie downloads to specific commit SHAs for reproducible builds (NEWTON_ASSETS_REF, MENAGERIE_REF)
• Add ref parameter to download_asset() to allow overriding the pinned revision
• Add total_force_friction and force_matrix_friction to SensorContact for tangential (friction) force decomposition
• Add Gaussian Splat geometry support via ModelBuilder.add_shape_gaussian() and USD import
• Add configurable Gaussian sorting modes to SensorTiledCamera
• Add automatic box, sphere, and capsule shape fitting for convex meshes during MJCF import
• Add color and texture reading to usd.utils.get_mesh()
• Export ViewerBase from newton.viewer public API
• Add custom_attributes argument to ModelBuilder.add_shape_convex_hull()
• Add RJ45 plug-socket insertion example with SDF contacts, latch joint, and interactive gizmo

Changed

• Require mujoco ~=3.6.0 and mujoco-warp ~=3.6.0 (previously 3.5.x)
• Replace plyfile dependency with open3d for mesh I/O. Users who depended on plyfile transitively should install it separately.
• Switch Python build backend from hatchling to uv_build
• Switch mesh-SDF collision from triangle-based gradient descent to edge-based Brent's method to reduce contact jitter
• Unify heightfield and mesh collision pipeline paths; the separate heightfield_midphase_kernel and shape_pairs_heightfield buffer are removed in favor of the shared mesh midphase
• Replace per-shape Model.shape_heightfield_data / Model.heightfield_elevation_data with compact Model.shape_heightfield_index / Model.heightfield_data / Model.heightfield_elevations, matching the SDF indirection pattern. Use Model.heightfield_data indexed via Model.shape_heightfield_index instead.
• Standardize rigid_contact_normal to point from shape 0 toward shape 1 (A-to-B), matching the documented convention. Consumers that previously negated the normal on read (XPBD, VBD, MuJoCo, Kamino) no longer need to.
• Replace Model.sdf_data / sdf_volume / sdf_coarse_volume with texture-based equivalents (texture_sdf_data, texture_sdf_coarse_textures, texture_sdf_subgrid_textures). Use Model.texture_sdf_data, texture_sdf_coarse_textures, and texture_sdf_subgrid_textures instead.
• Render inertia boxes as wireframe lines instead of solid boxes in the GL viewer to avoid occluding objects
• Make contact reduction normal binning configurable (polyhedron, scan directions, voxel budget) via constants in contact_reduction.py
• Upgrade GL viewer lighting from Blinn-Phong to Cook-Torrance PBR with GGX distribution, Schlick-GGX geometry, Fresnel-weighted ambient, and ACES filmic tone mapping
• Change implicit MPM residual computation to consider both infinity and l2 norm
• Change implicit MPM hardening law from exponential to hyperbolic sine (sinh(-h * log(Jp))), no longer scales elastic modulus
• Change implicit MPM collider velocity mode names: "forward" / "backward" replace "instantaneous" / "finite_difference". Old names are no longer accepted.
• Simplify SensorContact force output: add total_force (aggregate per sensing object) and force_matrix (per-counterpart breakdown, None when no counterparts)
• Add sensing_obj_idx (list[int]), counterpart_indices (list[list[int]]), sensing_obj_type, and counterpart_type attributes. Rename include_total to measure_total
• Replace verbose Apache 2.0 boilerplate with two-line SPDX-only license headers across all source and documentation files
• Improve wrench preservation in hydroelastic contacts with contact reduction.
• Show Newton deprecation warnings during example runs started via python -m newton.examples ... or python -m newton.examples.<category>.<module>; pass -W ignore::DeprecationWarning if you need the previous quiet behavior.
• Reorder ModelBuilder.add_shape_gaussian() parameters so xform precedes gaussian, in line with other add_shape_* methods. Callers using positional arguments should switch to keyword form (gaussian=..., xform=...); passing a Gaussian as the second positional argument still works but emits a DeprecationWarning
• Rename ModelBuilder.add_shape_ellipsoid() parameters a, b, c to rx, ry, rz. Old names are still accepted as keyword arguments but emit a DeprecationWarning
• Rename collide_plane_cylinder() parameter cylinder_center to cylinder_pos for consistency with other collide functions. The old name is no longer accepted.
• Add optional state parameter to SolverBase.update_contacts() to align the base-class signature with Kamino and MuJoCo solvers
• Use Literal types for SolverImplicitMPM.Config string fields with fixed option sets (solver, warmstart_mode, collider_velocity_mode, grid_type, transfer_scheme, integration_scheme)
• Migrate wp.array(dtype=X) type annotations to wp.array[X] bracket syntax (Warp 1.12+).
• Align articulated State.body_qd / FK / IK / Jacobian / mass-matrix linear velocity with COM-referenced motion. If you were comparing body_qd[:3] against finite-differenced body-origin motion, recover origin velocity via v_origin = v_com - omega x r_com_world. Descendant FREE / DISTANCE joint_qd remains parent-frame and joint_f remains a world-frame COM wrench.

Deprecated

• Deprecate ModelBuilder.default_body_armature, the armature argument on ModelBuilder.add_link() / ModelBuilder.add_body(), and USD-authored body armature via newton:armature in favor of adding any isotropic artificial inertia directly to inertia
• Deprecate SensorContact.net_force in favor of SensorContact.total_force and SensorContact.force_matrix
• Deprecate SensorContact(include_total=...) in favor of SensorContact(measure_total=...)
• Deprecate SensorContact.sensing_objs in favor of SensorContact.sensing_obj_idx
• Deprecate SensorContact.counterparts and SensorContact.reading_indices in favor of SensorContact.counterpart_indices
• Deprecate SensorContact.shape (use total_force.shape and force_matrix.shape instead)
• Deprecate SensorTiledCamera.render_context; prefer SensorTiledCamera.utils and SensorTiledCamera.render_config.
• Deprecate SensorTiledCamera.RenderContext; use SensorTiledCamera.RenderConfig for config types and SensorTiledCamera.render_config / SensorTiledCamera.utils for runtime access.
• Deprecate SensorTiledCamera.Config; prefer SensorTiledCamera.RenderConfig and SensorTiledCamera.utils.
• Deprecate max_worlds parameter of ViewerBase.set_model() in favor of ViewerBase.set_visible_worlds()
• Deprecate Viewer.update_shape_colors() in favor of writing directly to Model.shape_color
• Deprecate ModelBuilder.add_shape_ellipsoid() parameters a, b, c in favor of rx, ry, rz
• Deprecate passing a Gaussian as the second positional argument to ModelBuilder.add_shape_gaussian(); use the gaussian= keyword argument instead
• Deprecate SensorTiledCamera.utils.assign_random_colors_per_world() and assign_random_colors_per_shape() in favor of per-shape colors via ModelBuilder.add_shape_*(color=...)

Removed

• Remove Heightfield.finalize() and stop storing raw pointers for heightfields in Model.shape_source_ptr; heightfield collision data is accessed via Model.shape_heightfield_index / Model.heightfield_data / Model.heightfield_elevations
• Remove robot_humanoid example in favor of basic_plotting which uses the same humanoid model with diagnostics visualization

Fixed

• Fix GL viewer crash when enabling "Gap + Margin" for soft-body-only states with no rigid body transforms
• Fix inertia validation spuriously inflating small but physically valid eigenvalues for lightweight components (< ~50 g) by using a relative threshold instead of an absolute 1e-6 cutoff
• Restore keyboard camera movement while hovering gizmos so keyboard controls remain active when the pointer is over gizmos
• Resolve USD asset references recursively in resolve_usd_from_url so nested stages are fully downloaded
• Unify CPU and GPU inertia validation to produce identical results for zero-mass bodies with bound_mass, singular inertia, non-symmetric tensors, and triangle-inequality boundary cases
• Fix UnboundLocalError crash in detailed inertia validation when eigenvalue decomposition encounters NaN/Inf input
• Handle NaN/Inf mass and inertia deterministically in both validation paths (zero out mass and inertia)
• Update ModelBuilder internal state after fast-path (GPU kernel) inertia validation so it matches the returned Model
• Fix MJCF mesh scale resolution to use the mesh asset's own class rather than the geom's default class, avoiding incorrect vertex scaling for models like Robotiq 2F-85 V4
• Fix articulated bodies drifting laterally on the ground in XPBD solver by solving rigid contacts before joints
• Fix hide_collision_shapes=True not hiding collision meshes that have bound PBR materials
• Filter inactive particles in viewer so only particles with ParticleFlags.ACTIVE are rendered
• Fix concurrent asset download races on Windows by using content-addressed cache directories
• Fix body gravcomp not being written to the MuJoCo spec, causing it to be absent from XML saved via save_to_mjcf
• Fix compute_world_offsets grid ordering to match terrain grid row-major order so replicated world indices align with terrain block indices
• Fix eq_solimp not being written to the MuJoCo spec for equality constraints, causing it to be absent from XML saved via save_to_mjcf
• Fix WELD equality constraint quaternion written in xyzw format instead of MuJoCo's wxyz format in the spec, causing incorrect orientation in XML saved via save_to_mjcf
• Fix update_contacts not populating rigid_contact_point0/rigid_contact_point1 when using use_mujoco_contacts=True
• Fix MPR anti-flicker inflate biasing contact distances and witness points for convex-convex pairs, causing phantom overlap in stacking scenarios
• Fix VSync toggle having no effect in ViewerGL on Windows 8+ due to a pyglet bug where DwmFlush() is never called when _always_dwm is True
• Fix loop joint coordinate mapping in the MuJoCo solver so joints after a loop joint read/write at correct qpos/qvel offsets
• Fix viewer crash when contact buffer overflows by clamping contact count to buffer size
• Decompose loop joint constraints by DOF type (WELD for fixed, CONNECT-pair for revolute, single CONNECT for ball) instead of always emitting 2x CONNECT
• Fix inertia box wireframe rotation for isotropic and axisymmetric bodies in viewer
• Implicit MPM solver now uses mass=0 for kinematic particles instead of ACTIVE flag
• Suppress macOS OpenGL warning about unloadable textures by binding a 1x1 white fallback texture when no albedo or environment texture is set
• Fix MuJoCo solver freeze when immovable bodies (kinematic, static, or fixed-root) generate contacts with degenerate invweight
• Fix forward-kinematics child-origin linear velocity for articulated translated joints
• Fix ModelBuilder.approximate_meshes() to handle the duplication of per-shape custom attributes that results from convex decomposition
• Fix get_tetmesh() winding order for left-handed USD meshes
• Fix contact force conversion in SolverMuJoCo to include friction (tangential) components
• Fix URDF inertial parameters parsing in parse_urdf so inertia tensor is correctly calculated as R@I@R.T
• Fix Poisson surface reconstruction segfault under parallel test execution by defaulting to single-threaded Open3D Poisson (n_threads=1)
• Fix overly conservative broadphase AABB for mesh shapes by using the pre-computed local AABB with a rotated-box transform instead of a bounding-sphere fallback, eliminating false contacts between distant meshes
• Fix heightfield bounding-sphere radius underestimating Z extent for asymmetric height ranges (e.g. min_z=0, max_z=10)
• Fix VBD self-contact barrier C2 discontinuity at d = tau caused by a factor-of-two error in the log-barrier coefficient
• Fix fast inertia validation treating near-symmetric tensors within np.allclose() default tolerances as corrections, aligning CPU and GPU validation warnings
• Fix URDF joint dynamics friction import so specified friction values are preserved during simulation
• Fix requires_grad not being preserved in ArticulationView attribute getters, breaking gradient propagation through selection queries
• Fix duplicate Reset button in brick stacking example when using the example browser
• Cap cbor2 dependency to <6 to prevent recorder test failures caused by breaking deserialization changes in cbor2 6.0
• Clamp viewer picking force to prevent explosion when picking light objects near stiff contacts, configurable via pick_max_acceleration parameter on the Picking class (default 5g of effective articulation mass)
• Fix cloth_franka example Jacobian broken by COM-referenced body_qd convention change; adjust robot base height, gripper orientations, and grasp targets for improved reachability (a follow-up PR will migrate the example to newton.ik)

[1.0.0] - 2026-03-10

Initial public release.