Large-scale tactile datasets are expensive because useful observations require repeated physical contact. Existing simulators reproduce deformation caused by contact, but omit high-frequency surface detail such as fabric weaves, wood grain, or surface artifacts.
Norm2Tex is a plug-in layer that augments a simulator's depth representation with texture from a UV-matched normal map. It leaves the original contact and rendering pipeline intact, with proven sim-to-real transfer.
Freely available meshes often include an RGB map but no high-resolution surface geometry. We instead construct procedural materials with control scale, direction, and local variation. We then export RGB textures, normal maps, and UV-adjusted meshes for simulation.
The same material family can be varied to increase diversity while preserving the spatial relationship between the object and its tactile texture.
Norm2Tex keeps texture anchored to the object throughout the simulation:
The textured depth image then continues through the original tactile renderer.
Procedural Blender materials create UV-matched normal maps for arbitrary meshes.
Normal-derived gradients are integrated into a pseudo-height map.
The local height map is added before the simulator's original renderer.
Target is to open yet hold before it drops.
@misc{bien2026norm2tex,
title={Norm2Tex: Augmenting Visuo-Tactile Simulations with Texture},
author={Seongjin Bien and Débora Oliveira Makowski and Roberto Calandra and Florian Walter and Wolfram Burgard},
year={2026},
eprint={2609.25398},
archivePrefix={arXiv},
primaryClass={cs.RO},
url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.25398},
}