Transforms are visible even when published on non-standard topics

[aalbaali]

I have a bagfile that contains transform messages on the /tf and /tf_static topics. I usually playback the bags but without playing back all the transforms (e.g., play odom->base_link but not map->odom). My way to do this is to playback the bag while remapping the transform topics to /tf:=/bag/tf and /tf_static:=/bag/tf_static, then I have a node that selects the transforms to map from /bag/tf to /tf.

However, I noticed that when I do that foxglove still views the messages on the remapped topics (i.e., /bag/tf and /bag/tf_static), which I do not want it to do (rviz doesn't do that). It seems that foxgloves publishes the transforms published on any topic.

How can I specify which topics foxglove should listen to for the Transforms section?

[defunctzombie]

This is by design (expected). Foxglove will listen for transforms on all valid topics which publish transforms. There is no way to disable specific transform topics. If you want to prevent Foxglove from consuming a transform topic you'll need to avoid publishing it.

[aalbaali]

all valid topics

What are the valid topics? It seems that foxglove captures any TFMessage sent to any topic (e.g., /abcd).

Thanks for the reply. I find that an odd design choice given that there could be various Transform topics on a bag/node that the user would like to ignore. I guess the decision was made to combine /tf and /tf_static into a single bundle, but it forces the user into this paradigm.

It seems that my only choice regarding playing back bags is to play the bag, and record the desired transforms into a new bag and then playback the new bag into foxglove. Is there a better way to do this?

[defunctzombie]

What are the valid topics?

Any topic which publishes a TFMessage. "Valid" was not a great word for me to use for this.

Any topic that publishes messages of these schemas: https://docs.foxglove.dev/docs/visualization/panels/3d/#transforms is considered a "transform" topic in the 3D panel and will be subscribed.

Notably the /tf convention is a ROS convention rather than a general robotics "thing". Some robots use other topic names for their transforms.