[Bug Report] Recording animation does not record the visual markers (e.g., heading command)

[tylerlum]

I followed the instructions for recording an animation (https://isaac-sim.github.io/IsaacLab/main/source/how-to/record_animation.html)

It mostly worked, but it did not record and animate the visual marker (arrow above the robot showing the commanded and actual velocity).

Below is the video of the policy play and recording:

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/4daf60b8-1cb6-40f7-9bd2-d3b68ddb5d68

Below is the video of my playing back the recording (note that the robots move but not the visuals):

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/fb851357-b497-4d90-a6a2-931a94fb116b

Can this be added? The floating visuals look a bit ugly just staying there. The short-term solution is just to hide/remove those markers, but ideally, we could see the arrows just like I saw in the first video

[RandomOakForest]

Thank you for posting this. The team will review. There may be a workaround.

[Mayankm96]

Can you add "/Visuals" to the target path here and see if that fixes the issue for you?

https://github.com/isaac-sim/IsaacLab/blob/main/source/isaaclab/isaaclab/envs/ui/base_env_window.py#L285

[tylerlum]

I tried both of the following (wasn't sure which one you meant):

-                target_paths=[("/World", True)],
+               target_paths=[("/Visuals", True)],

and

-                target_paths=[("/World", True)],
+                target_paths=[("/World", True), ("/Visuals", True)],

It still doesn't seem to work.

[tylerlum]

Here is a screenshot of what I see and a video of what I tried:

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/de38bccd-e03e-4a79-9f0d-4bff0a44c6f4

[tylerlum]

Another attempt:

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/aa4d2807-e285-4920-a08e-e85dd450824b

[tylerlum]

Github does not allow me to upload .usd files, so I compressed the folder of the two USD files here

2025-04-02_11-31-28.zip

[tylerlum]

Any update on this? Let me know if you can/can't reproduce the issue

[RandomOakForest]

Following up on this, it turns out the stage recorder does not support recording elements in the stage that are not prims. What you are trying to attempt may not be possible at this time. See this doc for reference.

[tylerlum]

Thanks for looking into this. That's disappointing to hear. When I want an animation, I often want to show someone the generated behavior from multiple angles. But not being able to visualize what the goal/target was makes this much less effective. I would probably just capture a screen recording (lose the 3D multiple views, but at least see the marker).

Is there a way to make the visual makers into prims so that this would be recorded?

[RandomOakForest]

Yes, as you would add any other object to the scene, though.