Utilities and helpers

Genesis World bundles a set of helper modules under genesis.utils for the operations that surround a simulation: selecting a compute backend, converting between array formats, applying geometric transforms, and loading assets from disk. This page is the entry point to those modules; each linked page documents one of them in detail.

Modules

• Constants and enums: enums and named constants for compute backends, joint types, and geometry types.

• Device and platform utilities: detecting the platform and selecting the compute backend and PyTorch device.

• Tensor utilities: converting between Quadrants fields, PyTorch tensors, and NumPy arrays.

• Geometry utilities: quaternion, rotation, and coordinate-transform helpers in genesis.utils.geom.

• File I/O utilities: cache and source directory paths, plus loading URDF and MJCF descriptions.

Initialization and globals

Most utilities assume the library has been initialized. gs.init() selects the backend, sets the random seed and float precision, and populates the module-level globals below.

import genesis as gs

gs.init(
    backend=gs.gpu,  # CUDA on Linux, Metal on macOS
    precision="32",
    seed=42,
)

After gs.init() returns, these globals hold the resolved configuration:

Global	Type	Description
gs.device	torch.device	The active PyTorch device (for example, cuda:0, mps:0, or cpu).
gs.backend	backend enum	The backend that was actually selected, after resolving gs.gpu.
gs.EPS	float	Numerical epsilon for the active float precision.

Components

• Constants and enums
• Device and platform utilities
• Tensor utilities
• Geometry utilities
• File I/O utilities

See also

• Options: configuration options passed to the scene and solvers.