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Tune quickstart capture framing and downsampling for documentation media - #7584

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Tune quickstart capture framing and downsampling for documentation media#7584
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isaac-sim:developfrom
mataylor-nvidia:mataylor/docs-media-quality

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@mataylor-nvidia mataylor-nvidia commented Sep 4, 2026

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Description

The quickstart media generator rendered the OVRTX path tracer straight to the 320x240 publication size. Robot silhouettes and shadow edges aliased badly at that size, and the per-task focal lengths left the subject occupying a small fraction of the frame with a large empty floor area around it.

This changes the capture and encode stages only:

  • Supersample. Capture at 1280x960 and downsample with lanczos in the generator, instead of path-tracing directly to the final size. This is what recovers the drawer handles, robot edges, and shadow definition.
  • Framing. Tighten the focal length per task to the largest value that still keeps the subject inside the published crop.
  • Denoise. Ease hqdn3d from 2:2:6:6 to 1:1:3:3. The heavy setting existed to hide path-tracer noise; supersampling now removes that noise without blurring away detail.
  • Palette. Widen from 128 to 256 colors and switch bayer to sierra2_4a dithering, which removes banding on the smoother gradients the sharper frames produce.

Before / after

End-to-end effect on a published frame — current pipeline on the left, this PR in the middle, and a 640px variant on the right that was evaluated and not taken:

GIF encoding old vs new

The framing options that were compared before settling on the tighter value:

Framing comparison

Full variant sweep, including rtx_environment="studio", which was rejected — it blows out the background and lowers contrast rather than raising it:

All variants

Per-task focal lengths

The safe focal length is scene-specific rather than a fixed ratio of the old value. Scaling every task by the same factor clips two of them, so they are tuned individually:

Task Before After Why
Franka cabinet 22 32 Most headroom of the four; subject roughly doubles in frame
G1 locomotion 20 29 Verified fully in frame
Cartpole 18 21 26 clipped the pole out of the crop; 23 grazed the top edge
Kuka Allegro 22 24 32 clipped the arm, and 26 left little headroom. Held back because the lift policy raises the arm above the pose a zero action holds

Cartpole and G1 under the naive proportional scaling — note the Cartpole pole leaving the top of the crop:

Cartpole and G1 scaled

Cartpole sweep that established 21 as the safe maximum:

Cartpole focal lengths

Kuka Allegro sweep showing the arm clipping at 32:

Kuka focal lengths

Each value was validated by capturing the task and inspecting the frame through the same crop and downscale the generator applies.

Review screenshots are hosted on the media-review-assets branch of the author's fork so they are not committed to this PR.

Media refresh

This PR changes tooling only. Since #7501 moved the quickstart GIFs to S3, docs/source/setup/quickstart.rst points at download.isaacsim.omniverse.nvidia.com URLs while the generator still writes agent-comparison.gif and task-sampler.gif into docs/source/_static/quickstart/. Regenerated media has to be uploaded to the bucket separately before readers see any change.

Type of change

  • Tooling / documentation media quality

Checklist

  • I have run the pre-commit checks with ./isaaclab.sh --format
  • I have made corresponding changes to the documentation — n/a, no documented API or page content changes
  • My changes generate no new warnings
  • I have added tests that prove my fix is effective or that my feature works — n/a, the generator has no test harness; validated by rendering each task and inspecting the published crop
  • I have updated the changelog and the corresponding version in the extension's config/extension.toml file — n/a, no source package changed
  • I have added my name to the CONTRIBUTORS.md or my name already exists there

The quickstart GIFs rendered the OVRTX path tracer straight to their 320x240
publication size, so robot silhouettes and shadow edges aliased badly, and the
per-task focal lengths left the subject occupying a small part of the frame
with a large empty floor area around it.

Capture at 1280x960 and let the generator downsample with lanczos, which
resolves the detail that rendering directly to the final size destroyed. Tighten
the focal lengths per task to the largest value that keeps the subject inside
the published crop. The safe value is scene-specific rather than a fixed ratio:
Cartpole clips its pole above 21, and Kuka Allegro is held at 24 because its
lift policy raises the arm above the pose a zero action holds.

Ease the denoiser from 2:2:6:6 to 1:1:3:3 now that supersampling rather than
blurring removes the path-tracer noise, and widen the GIF palette from 128 to
256 colors with sierra2_4a dithering to avoid banding on the smoother gradients.
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