Contact Determination of 3D Objects

EEPROM · 2003-10-09T12:47:14

Hi, I''m working on a physic engine wich is supposed to simulate Rigid Body Dynamics. It''s the first time I''m working on something related to collision and now I''m really in need of help. The engine already loads 3D objects from files and builds Octree based Sphere-Trees for each object to speed up collision detecion, and finding the area of a possible collision is no trouble. The real problem is how to calculate the exact point where contact did happen. I did some readings about it in some papers, but wasn''t able to extract any practical information out of them. The only thing I became to know is that it is unlike to have a "Point" of contact, but a "Penetration Region". All the scientific explanations about Contact Determination are so complex that I''m frustrated by now. I''m completly lost and don''t know wich direction to go. I would really appreciate any information from more experienced people who could give me some directions of where to go, what to do, or even better, how to do it. Thanks