[ros-users] Robot model meshes in RViz

[Armin Hornung]

Hi!

I have a few meshes which I converted from VRML to STL to be rendered as 
robot body parts (specified in the robot's URDF). Is it possible to make 
the RViz rendering more "smooth"? A different Ogre-based rendering tool 
displays the curvatures very smooth, while RViz seems to display each 
triangle as a flat surface (no interpolation of the surface normals). If 
I look at the meshes in Meshlab, the RViz view corresponds to "flat", 
while what I want to achieve corresponds to "smooth". Maybe there is a 
setting that I need to activate in the Mesh file or the URDF?

Secondly, is it possible to have multiple mesh parts / files per robot 
link? It seems like additional "visual" or "mesh" tags after the first 
one are ignored. Or do I have to create virtual (fixed) robot links for 
them? Alternatively, is it possible to have one multi-colored mesh? What 
I would like to achieve is to have a robot link that has 
differently-colored parts.

Best regards,
Armin

-- 
Armin Hornung                              Albert-Ludwigs-Universität
www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~hornunga   Dept. of Computer Science
HornungA at informatik.uni-freiburg.de        Humanoid Robots Lab
Tel.: +49 (0)761-203-8010                  Georges-Köhler-Allee 79
Fax : +49 (0)761-203-8007                  D-79110 Freiburg, Germany