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Game Physics
Cookbook
Gabor Szauer
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Game Physics Cookbook
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher,
except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the
information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without
warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers
and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or
indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies
and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt
Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
ISBN 978-1-78712-366-3
www.packtpub.com
Credits
Reviewers Proofreader
Francesco Sapio Safis Editing
Copy Editors
Safis Editing
Shaila Kusanale
About the Author
Gabor Szauer graduated from Full Sail University with a bachelor's degree in game
development. He has been making video games professionally for over 6 years. He has
worked on games for the Nintendo 3DS, Xbox 360, browser-based games, and mobile games.
In his free time Gabor makes video games, researches video game-related technologies, and
likes to design and construct furniture. Gabor currently resides in San Francisco, working in
the mobile game industry.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my mom and dad, Gabriella and János. Without your constant love and
support this book would not be possible.
I also want to thank my wife Lisa Jennifer Gordon who not only managed to put up with me
through the process of writing this book, but helped create many of the illustrations in the
book as well.
Finally, I want to thank my brother Martin, without his curiosity for programming the first draft
of this book would not have been written.
About the Reviewer
Francesco Sapio obtained his Computer Science and Control Engineering degree from
Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, with a couple of semesters in advance, scoring summa
cum laude. He is currently studying a Master of Science in Engineering in Artificial Intelligence
and Robotics at the same university.
He is a Unity3D and Unreal expert, a skilled game designer, and an experienced user of the
major graphics programs. He developed Gea2, formerly Game@School (Sapienza University
of Rome), an educational game for high school students to learn the concepts of physics, and
Sticker Book (series) (Dataware Games), a cross-platform series of games for kids. In addition,
he worked as a consultant for the (successfully funded by Kickstarter) game Prosperity – Italy
1434 (Entertainment Game Apps, Inc.), and for the open online collaborative ideation system
titled Innovoice (Sapienza University of Rome). Moreover, he has been involved in different
research projects such as Belief-Driven-Pathfinding (Sapienza University of Rome), a new
technique for pathfinding in videogames that was presented as a paper at the DiGRA-FDG
Conference 2016; and perfekt.ID (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology), which included
developing a recommendation system for games.
He is an active writer on the topic of game development. Recently, he authored the book
Getting Started with Unity 5.x 2D Game Development (Packt Publishing) which takes your
hand and guides you through the amazing journey of game development, the successful
Unity UI Cookbook (Packt Publishing), which has been translated into other languages and
teaches readers how to develop exciting and practical user interfaces for games within Unity,
and a short e-guide What do you need to know about Unity (Packt Publishing). In addition,
he co-authored the book Unity 5.x 2D Game Development Blueprints (Packt Publishing).
Furthermore, he has also been a reviewer for the following books: Mastering Unity 5.x
(Packt Publishing), Unity 5.x by Example (Packt Publishing), and Unity Game Development
Scripting (Packt Publishing).
Francesco is also a musician and a composer, especially of soundtracks for short films and
video games. For several years, he worked as an actor and dancer, where he was a guest
of honor at the theatre Brancaccio in Rome. In addition, he is a very active person, having
volunteered as a children's entertainer at the Associazione Culturale Torraccia in Rome.
Finally, Francesco loves math, philosophy, logic, and puzzle solving, but most of all, creating
video games — thanks to his passion for game designing and programming.
You can find him at www.francescosapio.com.
Acknowledgements
I'm deeply thankful to my parents for their infinite patience, enthusiasm, and support
throughout my life. Moreover, I'm thankful to the rest of my family, in particular to my
grandparents, since they have always encouraged me to do better in my life with the
Latin expressions "Ad maiora" and "Per aspera ad astra".
Finally, a huge thanks to all the special people around me whom I love, in particular to my
girlfriend; I'm grateful for all of your help in everything. I do love you.
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Table of Contents
Preface vii
Chapter 1: Vectors 1
Introduction 1
Vector definition 2
Component-wise operations 5
Dot product 11
Magnitude 13
Normalizing 16
Cross product 17
Angles 20
Projection 22
Reflection 26
Chapter 2: Matrices 31
Introduction 31
Matrix definition 32
Transpose 35
Multiplication 38
Identity matrix 41
Determinant of a 2x2 matrix 43
Matrix of minors 44
Cofactor 48
Determinant of a 3x3 matrix 49
Operations on a 4x4 matrix 51
Adjugate matrix 54
Matrix inverse 55
i
Table of Contents
ii
Table of Contents
iv
Table of Contents
Raycast Bounding Box 336
Raycast plane and triangle 342
Physics system 346
Integrating particles 351
Solving constraints 356
Verlet Integration 360
Chapter 15: Manifolds and Impulses 363
Introduction 363
Manifold for spheres 364
Manifold for boxes 369
Rigidbody Modifications 380
Linear Velocity 381
Linear Impulse 386
Physics System Update 393
Angular Velocity 399
Angular Impulse 407
Chapter 16: Springs and Joints 413
Introduction 413
Particle Modifications 414
Springs 416
Cloth 421
Physics System Modification 431
Joints 434
Appendix: Advanced Topics 437
Introduction 437
Generic collisions 438
Stability improvements 441
Springs 443
Open source physics engines 444
Books 446
Online resources 447
Summary 448
Index 449
v
Preface
At some point in your game development career, you might need to build a physics engine,
modify the source code of an existing physics engine, or even just model some interaction
using an existing physics engine. Each of these tasks is a real challenge. Knowing how a
physics engine is implemented under the hood will make all of these scenarios a lot simpler.
Building a physics engine from scratch might seem like a large, complex and confusing
project, but it doesn't have to be. Behind every physics engine are the same three core
components: a solid math library, accurate intersection testing, and usually impulse-based
collision resolution. The collision resolution does not have to use an impulse-based solver;
other resolution strategies exist as well.
This book covers the three core components of a physics engine in great detail. By the end
of the book you will have implemented particle-based physics, rigid body physics, and even
soft body physics through cloth simulation. This cookbook aims to break the components
of a physics engine down into bite-sized, independent recipes.
Chapter 2, Matrices, covers the basics of 2D, 3D, and 4D matrices. Operations such as matrix
multiplication and inversion are covered. This chapter is an introduction to the implementation
matrices in C++.
Chapter 3, Matrix Transformations, covers applying matrices to games. This chapter builds
upon the understanding of vectors and matrices built up in the previous chapters to explain
how matrices and vectors can be used to represent transformations in 3D space.
vii
Preface
Chapter 4, 2D Primitive Shapes, covers common 2D shapes games may need. This chapter
provides practical definitions and implementations of common 2D primitives.
Chapter 5, 2D Collisions, covers testing the 2D shapes defined in the last chapter for
intersection. This chapter covers the fundamental concepts of intersection testing in 2D,
which later chapters will expand into 3D.
Chapter 6, 2D Optimizations, covers speeding up the intersection tests written in the last
chapter. Once hundreds or even thousands of objects are colliding, brute force collision
detection will no longer work in real time. The topics covered in this chapter are vital for
keeping collision detection running in real time, even with a large number of objects.
Chapter 7, 3D Primitive Shapes, covers the common 3D shapes games may need.
This chapter provides the definition of the geometric primitives we will later build upon
to create a working 3D physics engine.
Chapter 8, 3D Point Tests, covers nearest point and containment tests in a 3D environment.
This chapter covers finding the closest point on the surface of a 3D primitive to a given point
and provides containment tests for the 3D primitives previously covered.
Chapter 9, 3D Shape Intersections, covers testing all of the 3D primitive shapes for
intersection. This chapter expands many of the 2D intersection tests covered previously in the
book into 3D space. The chapter also provides additional insight into optimizing intersection
tests in 3D space.
Chapter 10, 3D Line Intersections, covers testing the intersection of a line and any 3D
primitive, as well as raycasting against any 3D primitive. Ray casting is perhaps one of
the most versatile intersection tests. We will use ray casting in later chapters to avoid the
common problem of tunneling.
Chapter 11, Triangles and Meshes, covers a new primitive, the triangle, and how to use
triangles to represent a mesh. In a 3D game world, objects are often represented by complex
meshes rather than primitive 3D shapes. This chapter presents the most straightforward
way of representing these complex meshes in the context of a physics engine.
Chapter 12, Models and Scenes, covers adding a transformation to a mesh, as well as
using a hierarchy of meshes to represent a scene. Games often reuse the same mesh
transformed into a different space. This chapter defines a model, which is a mesh with
some transformation. The chapter also covers multiple models in a scene.
Chapter 13, Camera and Frustum, covers the frustum primitive and building a camera out
of matrices. The focus of this chapter is to build an easy to use camera which can be used
to view any 3D scene. Each camera will have a frustum primitive attached. The attached
frustum primitive can optimize render times by culling unseen objects.
viii
Preface
Chapter 14, Constraint Solving, covers a basic introduction to physics. This chapter introduces
particle physics and world space constraints for particles. In this chapter, the word constraint
refers to an immovable object in the physics simulation.
Chapter 15, Manifolds and Impulses, extends the particle physics engine built in the last chapter
by defining a rigid body object, which unlike a particle has some volume. Impulse-based collision
resolution is also covered in this chapter.
Chapter 16, Springs and Joints, creates springs and simple joint constraints for springs. Using
springs and particles, this chapter covers the basic concept of soft body physics. The chapter
focuses on implementing 3D cloth using springs and particles.
Appendix, Advanced Topics, covers issues this book did not have the scope to address.
Building a physics engine is a huge undertaking. While this book built a basic physics engine,
there are many topics that fell outside the scope of this book. This chapter provides guidance,
references, and resources to help the reader explore these advanced topics further.
Sections
In this book, you will find several headings that appear frequently (Getting ready, How to do it…,
How it works…, There's more…, and See also).
To give clear instructions on how to complete a recipe, we use these sections as follows:
Getting ready
This section tells you what to expect in the recipe, and describes how to set up any software or
any preliminary settings required for the recipe.
ix
Preface
How to do it…
This section contains the steps required to follow the recipe.
How it works…
This section usually consists of a detailed explanation of what happened in the
previous section.
There's more…
This section consists of additional information about the recipe in order to make the reader
more knowledgeable about the recipe.
See also
This section provides helpful links to other useful information for the recipe.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of
information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions,
pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "We can
include other contexts through the use of the include directive."
// Structure definitions
// Method declarations
#endif
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for
example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Under the Application divider
you will find the code"
x
Preface
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xi
Preface
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xii
Vectors
1
In this chapter, we will cover the following vector operations:
ff Addition
ff Subtraction
ff Multiplication
ff Scalar Multiplication
ff Cross Product
ff Dot Product
ff Magnitude
ff Distance
ff Normalization
ff Angle
ff Projection
ff Reflection
Introduction
Throughout this book we are going to explore the mathematical concepts required to detect
and react to intersections in a 3D environment. In order to achieve robust collision detection
and build realistic reactions, we will need a strong understanding of the math required. The
most important mathematical concepts in physics are Vectors and Matrices.
Physics and collisions rely heavily on Linear Algebra. The math involved may sound
complicated at first, but it can be broken down into simple steps. The recipes in this chapter
will explain the properties of vectors using math formulas. Each recipe will also contain a
visual guide. Every formula will also have an accompanying code sample.
1
Vectors
This chapter does not assume you have any advanced math knowledge. I try
to cover everything needed to understand the formulas presented. If you find
yourself falling behind, Khan Academy covers the basic concepts of linear
algebra at: www.khanacademy.org/math/linear-algebra.
Vector definition
A vector is an n-tuple of real numbers. A tuple is a finite ordered list of elements. An n-tuple is
an ordered list of elements which has n dimensions. In the context of games n is usually 2, 3,
or 4. An n-dimensional vector is represented as follows:
The subscript numbers are called the components of the vector. Components are
expressed as a number or as a letter corresponding to the axis that component represents.
Subscripts are indexed starting with 0. For example, is the same as . Axis x, y, z, and w
correspond to the numbers 0, 1, 2, and 3, respectively.
Vectors are written as a capital bold letter with or without an arrow above it. and V are both
valid symbols for vector V. Throughout this book we are going to be using the arrow notation.
A vector does not have a position; it has a magnitude and a direction. The components of
a vector measure signed displacement. In a two-dimensional vector for example, the first
component represents displacement on the X axis, while the second number represents
displacement on the Y axis.
2
Chapter 1
A vector consists of a direction and a magnitude. The direction is where the vector points and
the magnitude is how far along that direction the vector is pointing. You can think of a vector
as a series of instructions. For example, take three steps right and two steps up. Because
a vector does not have a set position, where it is drawn does not matter as shown in the
following diagram:
The preceding figure shows several vectors, with vector (3,2) appearing multiple times. The
origin of a vector could be anywhere; the coordinate system of the preceding figure was
omitted to emphasize this.
Getting ready
Video games commonly use two, three, and four-dimensional vectors. In this recipe, we are
going to define C++ structures for two and three-dimensional vectors. These structures will
expose each component of the vector by the name of an axis, as well as a numeric index.
How to do it…
Follow these steps to start implementing a math library with vector support:
1. Create a new C++ header file; call this file vectors.h; add standard C-style header
guards to the file:
#ifndef _H_MATH_VECTORS_
#define _H_MATH_VECTORS_
// Structure definitions
// Method declarations
#endif
3
Vectors
float x;
float y;
};
float asArray[2];
};
float& operator[](int i) {
return asArray[i];
}
} vec2;
3. After the definition of vec2, add the definition for a three-dimensional vector:
typedef struct vec3 {
union {
struct {
float x;
float y;
float z;
};
float asArray[3];
};
float& operator[](int i) {
return asArray[i];
}
} vec3;
How it works…
We have created two new structures, vec2 and vec3. These structures represent two and
three-dimensional vectors, respectively. The structures are similar because with every new
dimension the vector just adds a new component.
Inside the vector structures we declare an anonymous union. This anonymous union allows
us to access the components of the vector by name or as an index into an array of floats.
Additionally, we overloaded the indexing operator for each structure. This will allow us to
index the vectors directly.
With the access patterns we implemented, the components of a vector can be accessed
in the following manner:
vec3 right = {1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f};
std::cout<< "Component 0: " <<right.x<< "\n";
std::cout<< "Component 0: " <<right.asArray[0] << "\n";
std::cout<< "Component 0: " <<right[0] << "\n";
4
Chapter 1
There's more…
Games often use a four-dimensional vector, which adds a W component. However, this W
component is not always treated as an axis. The W component is often used simply to store
the result of a perspective divide, or to differentiate a vector from a point.
The W component
A vector can represent a point in space or a direction and a magnitude. A three-dimensional
vector has no context; there is no way to tell from the x, y, and z components if the vector is
supposed to be a point in space or a direction and a magnitude. In the context of games,
this is what the W component of a four-dimensional vector is used for.
We did not implement a four-dimensional vector because we will not need it. Our matrix class
will implement explicit functions for multiplying points and vectors. We will revisit this topic in
Chapter 3, Matrix Transformations.
Component-wise operations
Given two vectors, there are several component-wise operations we can perform. These
operations will operate on each component of the vector and yield a new vector.
You can add two vectors component wise. Given two n-dimensional vectors and ,
addition is defined as follows:
You can also subtract two vectors component wise. Given two n-dimensional vectors and
, subtraction is defined as follows:
5
Vectors
Multiplying two vectors can also be done component wise. There are other ways to multiply
two vectors; the dot product or cross product. Both of these alternate methods will be covered
later in this chapter. Given two n-dimensional vectors and , multiplication is defined
as follows:
In addition to multiplying two vectors, you can also multiply a vector by a scalar. In this
context, a scalar is any real number. Given vector and scalar S, scalar multiplication
is defined as follows:
Finally, we can check for vector equality by comparing each component of the vectors being
tested. Two vectors are the same only if all of their components are equal.
Getting ready
We're going to implement all of the preceding component-wise operations by overloading the
appropriate C++ operators. All of the operators presented in this section can be overloaded in
C# as well. In languages that do not support operator overloading, you will have to make these
into regular functions.
How to do it…
Follow these steps to override common operators for the vector class. This will make working
with vectors feel more intuitive:
6
Chapter 1
2. Create a new C++ source file, vectors.cpp. Include the following headers in the
new file:
#include "vectors.h"
#include <cmath>
#include <cfloat>
7
Vectors
vec3 operator*(const vec3& l, float r) {
return { l.x * r, l.y * r, l.z * r };
}
8. Finally, add the implementation for vector equality to the vectors.cpp file. This is
where the compare macro we created in step 3 comes in:
bool operator==(const vec2& l, const vec2& r) {
return CMP(l.x, r.x) && CMP(l.y, r.y);
}
How it works…
What these components-wise operations are doing might not be obvious from the definitions
and code provided alone. Let's explore the component-wise operations of vectors visually.
Addition
Every vector describes a series of displacements. For example, the vector (2, 3) means move
two units in the positive X direction and three units in the positive Y direction. We add vectors
by following the series of displacements that each vector represents. To visualize this, given
vectors and , draw them so the head of touches the tail of The result of the
addition is a new vector spanning from the tail of to the head of :
8
Chapter 1
Subtraction
Subtraction works the same way as addition. We have to follow the negative displacement of
vector starting from vector . To visually subtract vectors and , draw and with
their tails touching. The result of the subtraction is a vector spanning from the head of to
the head of :
In the above image, the vector appears multiple times. This is to emphasize that the
position of a vector does not matter. Both of the vectors above represent the same
displacement!
9
Vectors
Comparison
Comparing vectors is a component-wise operation. If every component of each vector is the
same, the vectors are equal. However, due to floating point error we can't compare floats
directly. Instead, we must do an epsilon comparison. Epsilon tests commonly fall in one
of two categories: absolute tolerance and relative tolerance:
#define ABSOLUTE(x, y) (fabsf((x)–(y)) <= FLT_EPSILON)
#define RELATIVE(x, y) \
(fabsf((x) – (y)) <= FLT_EPSILON * Max(fabsf(x), fabsf(y)))
The absolute tolerance test fails when the numbers being compared are large. The relative
tolerance test fails when the numbers being compared are small. Because of this, we
implemented a tolerance test with the CMP macro that combines the two. The logic behind the
CMP macro is described by Christer Ericson at www.realtimecollisiondetection.net/
pubs/Tolerances.
There's more…
It's desirable to make vectors easy to construct in code. We can achieve this by adding default
constructors. Each vector should have two constructors: one that takes no arguments and
one that takes a float for each component of the vector. We do not need a copy constructor or
assignment operator as the vec2 and vec3 structures do not contain any dynamic memory
or complex data. The pair of constructors for the vec2 structure will look like this:
vec2() : x(0.0f), y(0.0f) { }
vec2(float _x, float _y) : x(_x), y(_y) { }
10
Chapter 1
The vec3 constructors will look similar, it adds an additional component. The constructors for
the vec3 structure will look like this:
vec3() : x(0.0f), y(0.0f), z(0.0f) { }
vec3(float _x, float _y, float _z) : x(_x), y(_y), z(_z) { }
Dot product
The dot product, sometimes referred to as scalar product or inner product between two
vectors, returns a scalar value. It's written as a dot between two vectors, . The formula
for the dot product is defined as follows:
The sigma symbol means sum (add) everything up that follows. The number on top of
the sigma is the upper limit; the variable on the bottom is the lower limit. If n and i is 0,
the subscripts 0, 1, and 2 are processed. Without using the sigma symbol, the preceding
equation would look like this:
The resulting scalar represents the directional relation of the vectors. That is,
represents how much is pointing in the direction of . Using the dot product we
can tell if two vectors are pointing in the same direction or not following these rules:
ff If the dot product is positive, the vectors are pointing in the same direction
ff If the dot product is negative, the vectors point in opposing directions
ff If the dot product is 0, the vectors are perpendicular
How to do it…
Follow these steps to implement the dot product for two and three dimensional vectors:
11
Vectors
How it works…
Given the formula and the code for the dot product, let's see an example of what we could use
it for. Assume we have a spaceship S. We know its forward vector, and a vector that points
to its right, :
We also have an enemy ship E, and a vector that points from our ship S to the enemy ship E,
vector :
How can we tell if the the ship S needs to turn left or right to face the enemy ship E?
We need to take the dot product of and . If the result of the dot product is positive,
the ship needs to turn right. If the result of the dot product is negative, the ship needs
to turn to the left. If the result of the dot product is 0, the ship does not need to turn.
12
Chapter 1
There's more…
Our definition of the dot product is fairly abstract. We know that the dot product gives us some
information as to the angle between the two vectors, and . We can use the dot product
to find the exact angle between these two vectors. The key to this is an alternate definition of
the dot product.
Geometric definition
Given the vectors and , the geometric definition of the dot product is the length of
multiplied by the length of multiplied by the cosine of the angle between them:
The || operator in the above equation means length and will be covered in the next section. We
will cover the geometric definition and other properties of the dot product later in this chapter.
Magnitude
The magnitude or length of a vector is written as the letter of the vector surrounded by two
bars, . The magnitude of a vector is the square root of the dot product of the vector with
itself:
In games we often compare the magnitude of a vector to known numbers; however, doing
a comparison between a number and the magnitude is expensive because of the square
root operation. A simple solution to this problem is to square the number, and then compare
against square magnitude. This means, instead of the following:
if (Magnitude(someVector) < 5.0f) {
13
Vectors
We'd then get the same result, avoiding the expensive square root operation.
Getting ready
To find the magnitude of a vector, take the square root of the vector's dot product with
its-self. The square root operation is a relatively expensive one that should be avoided
whenever possible. For this reason, we are also going to implement a function to find the
square magnitude of a vector.
How to do it…
Follow these steps to implement a function for finding the length and squared length of two
and three dimensional vectors.
14
Chapter 1
How it works…
We can derive the equation for the magnitude of a vector from the geometric definition of the
dot product that we briefly looked at in the last section:
Because we are taking the dot product of the vector with itself, we know the test vectors
point in the same direction; they are co-directional. Because the vectors being tested are
co-directional, the angle between them is 0. The cosine of 0 is 1, meaning the part
of the equation can be eliminated, leaving us with the following:
If both the test vectors are the same (which in our case they are) the equation can be written
using only :
We can rewrite the preceding equation, taking the square root of both sides to find the length
of vector :
There's more…
The magnitude of a vector can be used to find the distance between two points. Assuming we
have points and , we can find a vector ( ) that connects them by subtracting
from , as shown in the following diagram:
15
Vectors
The distance between the two points is the length of . This could be expressed in code
as follows:
float Distance(const vec3& p1, const vec3& p2) {
vec3 t = p1 - p2;
return Magnitude(t);
}
Normalizing
A vector with a magnitude of 1 is a normal vector, sometimes called a unit vector. Whenever
a vector has a length of 1, we can say that it has unit length. A normal vector is written as the
letter of the vector with a caret symbol on top instead of an arrow, . We can normalize any
vector by dividing each of its components by the length of the vector:
We never implemented division operators for the vector class. We can rewrite the preceding
equation as reciprocal multiplication. This means we can obtain the normal of a vector if we
multiply that vector by the inverse of its length:
Getting ready
We are going to implement two functions, Normalize and Normalized. The first function
will change the input vector to have a length of 1. The second function will not change the
input vector; rather it will return a new vector with a length of 1.
How to do it…
Follow these steps to implement functions which will make a vector unit length or return a unit
length vector. These steps utilize reciprocal multiplication.
16
Chapter 1
void Normalize(vec3& v) {
v = v * (1.0f / Magnitude(v));
}
How it works…
Normalizing works by scaling the vector by the inverse of its length. This scale makes the
vector have unit length, which is a length of 1. Unit vectors are special as any number
multiplied by 1 stays the same number. This makes unit vectors ideal for representing a
direction. If a direction has unit length, scaling it by some velocity becomes trivial.
Cross product
The cross product is written as a X between two vectors, . It returns a new vector that
is perpendicular to both vectors and . That is, the result of the cross product points
90 degrees from both vectors.
The cross product is defined only for three-dimensional vectors. This is because any two
non-parallel vectors form a plane, and there will always exist a line perpendicular to that
plane. As such, we will only be implementing the cross product for the vec3 structure.
Getting ready
The formula behind the cross product seems large and complicated. We're going to implement
a pattern in code that hopefully will make remembering this formula easy.
17
Vectors
How to do it…
The cross product is only well defined for three dimensional vectors. Follow these steps to
implement the cross product in an intuitive way:
4. Flesh out the first row by multiplying l.y and r.z. Notice how the first column
contains x, y, and z components in order and so does the first row:
vec3 Cross(const vec3& l, const vec3& r) {
vec3 result;
result.x = l.y * r.z /* Will finish in step 6 */
result.y = /* Will finish in step 6 */
result.z = /* Will finish in step 6 */
return resut;
}
5. Follow the x, y, z pattern for the rest of the rows. Start each row with the appropriate
letter following the letter of the first column:
vec3 Cross(const vec3& l, const vec3& r) {
vec3 result;
result.x = l.y * r.z /* Will finish in step 6 */
result.y = l.z * r.x /* Will finish in step 6 */
result.z = l.x * r.y /* Will finish in step 6 */
return resut;
}
18
Chapter 1
How it works…
We're going to explore the cross product using three normal vectors that we know to be
perpendicular. Let vector , , and represents the basis of , three-dimensional
space. This means we define the vectors as follows:
Each of these vectors are orthogonal to each other, meaning they are 90 degrees apart. This
makes all of the following statements about the cross product true:
ff Right X Up = Forward,
ff Up X Forward = Right,
ff Forward X Right = Up,
The cross product is not cumulative, is not the same as . Let's see what happens
if we flip the operands of the preceding formulas:
ff Up X Right = Backward,
ff Forward X Up = Left,
ff Right X Forward = Down,
19
Vectors
Matrices will be covered in the next chapter, if this section is confusing, I suggest re-reading
it after the next chapter. One way to evaluate the cross product is to construct a 3x3 matrix.
The top row of the matrix consists of vector , , and . The next row comprises the
components of the vector on the left side of the cross product, and the final row comprises the
components of the vector on the right side of the cross product. We can then find the cross
product by evaluating the pseudo-determinant of the matrix:
We will discuss matrices and determinants in detail in Chapter 2, Matrices. For now, the
preceding determinant evaluates to the following:
Angles
We have had a brief introduction to the angle between vectors when we discussed the dot
product and the magnitude of a vector. In this recipe, we will discuss how to find the actual
angle between two vectors. The formula to find angle theta between two vectors is:
20
Chapter 1
Getting ready
We have already implemented both the dot product and magnitude functions for vectors;
this means we have everything needed to find the angle between two vectors already written.
In general, this is a very expensive function, as it performs two square roots and an inverse
cosine. Because it's such an expensive function, we try to avoid it whenever possible.
We can save a little bit of performance if, instead of multiplying the length of both vectors,
we multiply the squared length of the vectors and then do just one square root operation
on the result.
How to do it…
1. Add the declaration of the angle function to vectors.h:
float Angle(const vec2& l, const vec2& r);
float Angle(const vec3& l, const vec3& r);
How it works…
This formula relies on the geometric definition of the dot product:
This formula states that the dot product of two vectors is the cosine of the angle between
them multiplied by both of their lengths. We can rewrite this formula with the cosine being
isolated if we divide both sides by the product of the lengths of and :
21
Vectors
We can now use the inverse of cosine, the arc cosine (acos), to find the angle theta:
There's more…
The acos function we used to find the angle between vectors comes from the standard C
math library. This implementation of acos returns radians, not degrees. It's much more
intuitive to think of angles in terms of degrees than radians.
Using these macros you can convert between radians and degrees. For example, if you wanted
to get the angle in degrees between vectors and , you could use the following code:
float degrees = RAD2DEG(Angle(A, B));
If you are interested in the math used to derive these numbers, I suggest watching the
following Khan Academy video:
https://www.khanacademy.org/math/algebra2/trig-functions/intro-to-
radians-alg2/v/introduction-to-radians
Projection
Sometimes it's useful to decompose a vector into parallel and perpendicular components with
respect to another vector. Projecting onto will give us the length of in the direction
of . This projection decomposes into its parallel component with respect to . Once we
know the parallel component of , we can use it to get the perpendicular component. The
formula for projecting onto is as follows:
22
Chapter 1
Getting ready
Implementing the projection is fairly straightforward as we already have both the dot product
and magnitude squared defined. In the following function, the vector being projected is
represented by the variable length, and the vector it is being projected onto is represented
by the variable direction. If we compare it to the preceding formula, length is , and
direction is .
How to do it…
Follow these steps to implement projection functions for two and three dimensional vectors.
A function to get the perpendicular component of the projection is also described:
23
Vectors
How it works…
Let's explore how projection works. Say we want to project onto , to find . Having
a ' character next to a vector means prime; it's a transformed version of the vector; is
pronounced A-Prime:
From the preceding figure we see that can be found by subtracting some unknown vector
from . This unknown vector is the perpendicular component of with respect to , let's
call it :
24
Chapter 1
We can get the perpendicular component by subtracting the projection of onto from
. The projection at this point is still unknown, that's what we are trying to find:
The dot product of two perpendicular vectors is 0. Because of this, the dot product of and
is going to be 0:
Substitute the value of with the equation we use to find its value, :
25
Vectors
Finally, let's substitute with the equation we use to find its value, :
Now the only unknown in the formula is s, let's try to find it. The dot product exhibits the
distributive property, let's distribute :
Now we can isolate s if we divide both sides of the equation by . Remember, the dot
product of a vector with itself yields the square magnitude of that vector:
Now we can solve by substituting s with the preceding formula. The final equation
becomes:
Reflection
One of the most important concepts in physics for games is collision response and how to
react to a collision occurring. More often than not this involves one of the colliding objects
bouncing off the other one. We can achieve the bounding through vector reflection. Reflection
is also heavily used in many areas of game development, such as graphics programming, to
find the color intensity of a fragment.
26
Chapter 1
Given vector and normal , we want to find a vector that is reflected around :
Keep in mind, in the preceding equation, is a unit length vector. This means that the
part of the equation actually projects onto . If was a non-normalized
vector, the preceding equation would be written as follows:
Getting ready
Implementing the preceding formula is going to look a little different, this is because we
only overloaded the vector scalar multiplication with the scalar being on the right side of the
equation. We're going to implement the function assuming is already normalized.
How to do it…
Follow these steps to implement a function which will reflect both two and three
dimensional vectors.
27
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