Implementation:Haosulab ManiSkill GroundBuilder

Knowledge Sources	Haosulab_ManiSkill
Domains	Robotics, Simulation, Scene Building
Last Updated	2026-02-15 08:00 GMT

Overview

Concrete tool for procedurally generating a textured ground plane with collision geometry for simulation scenes.

Description

The ground.py module provides the build_ground() function, which procedurally creates a checkered floor plane for ManiSkill scenes. The ground consists of two components:

1. Collision plane -- A SAPIEN plane collision shape positioned at the specified altitude, providing infinite-extent collision for physics simulation. 2. Visual mesh -- A procedurally generated triangle mesh with UV-mapped grid texture, creating the visible floor surface.

The visual mesh generation:

• Creates a grid of vertices spanning floor_width x floor_length meters, centered at the specified xy_origin.
• Generates triangle faces from the vertex grid.
• Applies UV coordinates for texture tiling based on texture_square_len.
• Uses a default grid texture shipped with the module, with configurable mipmap levels.

Special behaviors:

• When parallel_in_single_scene is True, only one ground visual is built (for scene index 0) to avoid redundancy.
• Rendering is only added when scene.can_render() is True.
• The function typically takes less than 0.05 seconds.

Usage

Called during environment scene building (_build_scene()) to create the ground plane. Most manipulation environments call this function.

Code Reference

Source Location

• Repository: Haosulab_ManiSkill
• File: mani_skill/utils/building/ground.py

Signature

def build_ground(
    scene: ManiSkillScene,
    floor_width: int = 100,
    floor_length: int = None,
    xy_origin: tuple = (0, 0),
    altitude=0,
    name="ground",
    texture_file=...,
    texture_square_len=4,
    mipmap_levels=4,
    add_collision=True,
) -> Actor: ...

Import

from mani_skill.utils.building.ground import build_ground

I/O Contract

Inputs

Name	Type	Required	Description
scene	ManiSkillScene	Yes	The scene to add the ground to
floor_width	int	No	Width of the floor in meters (default: 100)
floor_length	int	No	Length of the floor (defaults to floor_width if None)
altitude	float	No	Z-height of the ground plane (default: 0)
name	str	No	Name for the actor (default: "ground")
add_collision	bool	No	Whether to add collision geometry (default: True)

Outputs

Name	Type	Description
actor	Actor	The built static ground actor with collision and visual geometry

Usage Examples

Basic Usage

from mani_skill.utils.building.ground import build_ground

# Build a default ground plane
ground = build_ground(scene, floor_width=10)

# Build an elevated ground without collision
platform = build_ground(scene, floor_width=2, altitude=0.5, add_collision=False, name="platform")

Related Pages

• Environment:Haosulab_ManiSkill_Python_SAPIEN_Core
• Haosulab_ManiSkill_Actor