Installation¶

Setup¶

Please install/save everything locally to prevent any conflicts with other libraries. We will assume that you have a single workspace where you save all repos related to raisim. Here we introduce two variables

WORKSPACE: workspace where you clone your git repos (e.g., ~/raisim_workspace)
LOCAL_INSTALL: install directory where you install exported cmake libraries (e.g., ~/raisim_build)

You can add them to your environment variables or simply replace them by the path you want in the following instructions on this page.

Dependencies¶

You have to install the following packages before using raisim

eigen library
cmake > 3.10
For windows users, visual studio 2019 (we only support 2019 but it will probably work with 2015 or above). Make sure that you install the C++ module as well by checking the corresponding checkbox during install.

RaiSim includes many open-source libraries. See the COPYING file for the full list. Source code of Eigen and Pybind11 are included in the thirdParty directory.

RaiSim Install¶

Clone raisim from https://github.com/raisimTech/raisimlib.

The cloned repo is already a set of installed raisim packages. Under raisimLib/raisim/<OS-TYPE>, you will find the installed cmake packages.

To use raisim in your project, you can simply add the cmake package path and the shared library path to their corresponding environment variables as following

Add the following lines to your ~/.bashrc file

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$WORKSPACE/raisim/linux/lib
export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:$WORKSPACE/raisim/linux/lib

This allow the linux linker to find the raisim shared libraries. To let your project CMake know where to find raisim, simply pass an argument -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=$WORKSPACE/raisim/linux.

Add the following lines to your .zshrc file

export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH:$WORKSPACE/raisim/mac/lib
export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:$WORKSPACE/raisim/mac/lib

If you use an M1 or M2 based Mac, use m1 directory instead of mac. Do not use ~ to reference your home directory. Write the full path. Now the Mac linker knows where to find the raisim shared libraries. To let your project CMake know where to find raisim, simply pass an argument -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=$WORKSPACE/raisim/mac. Again, use m1 if you use an Apple silicon.

Add the win32 cmake package directory to your Path environment variable. You can do that by following these steps

“Edit the system environment variables”
In “Advanced tab”, “Environment Variables”
Click “Path” variable in the “System variables” list and click “edit”
Append $WORKSPACE/raisim/win32/
To let your project know where raisim is, simply pass an argument -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=$WORKSPACE/raisim/win32. (Note that we no longer have separate directories for release and debug builds. They are combined in to a single one.)

Building RaiSim Examples and Installing RaisimPy¶

You can use the CMakeLists.txt in the raisimLib directory to build raisim examples and other modules. The following options are available

RAISIM_EXAMPLE : Compile C++ RaiSim examples
RAISIM_MATLAB : Compile raisimMatlab (compiled binary is also provided). You need MATLAB for this option
RAISIM_PY : Compile raisimPy. When installed, it will copy raisimpy files to your python site-packages directory

You can generate build files using CMake as following

To build raisimPy for the correct python version, activate your conda environment before calling cmake.

cd $WORKSPACE/raisimLib
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$LOCAL_INSTALL -DRAISIM_EXAMPLE=ON -DRAISIM_PY=ON -DPYTHON_EXECUTABLE=$(which python)
make install -j4

We recommend using the CMake GUI. After generating the build files with the CMake GUI, you can build and install RaiSim using Visual Studio. Alternatively, you can do it as below in Windows Powershell

cd $WORKSPACE/raisimLib
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$LOCAL_INSTALL -DRAISIM_EXAMPLE=ON -DRAISIM_PY=ON -DPYTHON_EXECUTABLE=$(which python)
cmake --build . --target install --config Release

Note

For Linux users To use (vulkan version) RaiSimUnity in Linux, you need to install minizip, ffmpeg and vulkan. If you are going to use raisimGym, install the recommended version of gpu driver by pytorch. If not, install the latest version.

To install minizip and ffmpeg,

sudo apt install minizip ffmpeg

Vulkan installation depends on your OS distribution. You can easily find instructions online.

Ubuntu 22.04 users should run the following command before running RaisimUnity.

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so

For other versions of Ubuntu, the symlink is provided by Ubuntu automatically.

If you still cannot use raisimUnity, this probably means that your driver does not support vulkan. In that case, you should use raisimUnityOpengl. It only supports minimalistic graphics.

Activation Key¶

Rename the activation key that you received by email to activation.raisim. Save that file in <YOUR-HOME-DIR>/.raisim. In Linux and Mac, this is /home/<YOUR-USERNAME>/.raisim. In Windows, this is C:\Users\<YOUR-USERNAME>\.raisim (You might not be using C as your home directory).

RaiSim will also check the path you set by raisim::World::setActivationKey(). If the file is not found, it will search in the user directory, where you saved your activation.raisim file.

Examples¶

The built examples are stored in examples directory. In Windows, use powershell to run the examples, instead of manually clicking the icons. If you made a mistake during installation, it will give you an error message.

Make sure that you run raisimUnity executable in raisimUnity/<OS>/RaiSimUnity before you run the examples.