Box2D Farseer Physics Center of Mass and origin inconsistent - c#

I am using the Farseer Physics library with MonoGame.
In my game I use compound polygon bodies, created with BodyFactory.CreateCompoundPolygon(...);, but they have problem.
Their origin is in the top left corner, rather then the centroid like most Box2d objects. Since I need to rotate the bodies around a different pivot point than the top left, I found I can change the center of mass of a body (Body.LocalCenter). This works fine and dandy, and I can rotate the body using Body.ApplyAngularImpulse(...); or by changing Body.AngularVelocity, but here comes the problem:
Changing the rotation of the body using the methods I mentioned before works fine, and the pivot point used is the center of mass, but if I try to rotate the body by directly changing it's rotation (Body.Rotation), it rotates around the top left corner rather than the center of mass.
So in effect, Body.Rotation += 1; rotates around a different pivot point than with Body.AngularVelocity = 1;
You might be wondering why this is a problem, why I don't just use the methods I mentioned before to rotate the body. The problem is I need to be able to check the current rotation of the body. I can't figure out a way to do this. I can't use Body.Rotation since it returns the rotation around a wrong point.
TL;DR: Body.Rotation doesn't return rotation around center of mass, how to combat this?

You can have the pivot and mass center correctly set if you create your compound polygon from a list of points relative to the center.
For a 20 units side square :
instead of : [0,0][20,0][20,20][-20,20]
use : [-10,-10][10,-10][10,10][-10,10]

Related

Creating turning animation for up and down or rubiks cube

im creating a rubiks cube solver and simulator for my a level project and i have come across the problem of the top face of the cube not rotating properly. After a few tests of it i have come to the conclusion that the top face is rotating around the axis properly but in order for it to stay in line witht eh rest of the cube i also need to update the other axis. This is my code to rotate the face
for (int i = 0; i < 90 * n; i++)
{
cube[0].rotateY(degree); // degree is defined as Math.PI / 180 as its in radians
cube[3].rotateY(degree);
cube[6].rotateY(degree);
cube[9].rotateY(degree);
cube[12].rotateY(degree);
cube[14].rotateY(degree);
cube[17].rotateY(degree);
cube[20].rotateY(degree);
cube[23].rotateY(degree);
Invalidate();
}
I have tried also rotating the left and right side and they both work correctly while using the same function but for the other axis. i have definitions for the entire cubes rotation stored in rotation with x y and z properties. Initially i thought this wouldnt be a very hard fix so as well as rotating each cube on the y axis i rotated them along the x axis but for -rotation.x * 2 in order to counteract the problem however this didnt work and just transformed it into very weird positions. Im sure its just a simple maths expresion that i need to rotate it by but i cant work it out.
As i found it hard to explain my problem ive created this video to show it visually. You can see that the left and right rotations work although they are not yet animated and the top face rotates round and always snaps back into the original position but not the other 4 correctly. I am also aware that the colours dont come round the cube like they should but this is something i will work on once all the rotations work
Video of current coded soloution
the functions for the rotations simply update the rotation variable and redraws the cube and all the different cube's in the array are just there as i have created 26 smaller cubes to create 1 bigger cube so that rotations can work without just changing the colour.
If anyone has a nice maths equation to rotate this correctly that would be great but if not and you have another way of rotating the cubes in the cube then that would also be great.
Also just a side quest if anyone knows why my code doesnt rotate the side by 1 degree and then redraw it again inside the Invalidate command then id love to hear why.
Many thanks in advance.

Sphere vs Rotation Box Custom Collision Problem (C#, Unity)

I'm not really like to post questions about problems without doing the research, but I'm close to give up, so I thought I give it a shot and ask you about my problem.
I want to create a custom collision detection in Unity ( So please don't advice "use rigidbody and\or colliders" because I don't want to use them by purpose).
The main idea: I want to detect Basic Sphere and Basic Box collision. I already find AABB vs Sphere theme with the following solution:
bool intersect(sphere, box) {
var x = Math.max(box.minX, Math.min(sphere.x, box.maxX));
var y = Math.max(box.minY, Math.min(sphere.y, box.maxY));
var z = Math.max(box.minZ, Math.min(sphere.z, box.maxZ));
var distance = Math.sqrt((x - sphere.x) * (x - sphere.x) +
(y - sphere.y) * (y - sphere.y) +
(z - sphere.z) * (z - sphere.z));
return distance < sphere.radius;
}
And this code does the job, the box bounding and the sphere center point with radius works fine, I can detect the Sphere collision on Box.
The problem is, I want to Rotating the Cube in Runtime, so that will screw up everything, the bounding will split away and the collision will gone (or collide on random places). I've read about some comments where they said, bounding not works with rotation, but I'm not sure what else can I use to solve this problem.
Can you help me with this topic please? I'll take every advice I can get (except Colliders & Rigidbodies of course).
Thank you very much.
You might try using the separating axis theorem. Essentially, for a polyhedron, you use the normal of each face to create an axis. Project the two shapes you are comparing onto each axis and look for an intersection. If there is no intersection along any of the axes, there is no intersection of shapes. For a sphere, you will just need to project onto the polyhedron's axes. There is a great 2D intro to this from metanet.
Edit: hey, check it out-- a Unity implementation.
A good method to find if an AABB (axis aligned bounding box) and sphere are intersecting is to find the closest point on the box to the sphere's center and determine if that point is within the sphere's radius. If so, then they are intersecting, if not then not.
I believe you can do the same thing with this more complicated scenario. You can represent a rotated AABB with a geometrical shape called a parallelepiped. You would then find the closest point on the parallelepiped to the center of the sphere and again check if that point exists within the sphere's radius. If so, then they intersect. If not, then not.
The difficult part is finding the closest point on the parallelepiped. You can represent a parallelepiped in code with 4 3d vectors: center, extentRight, extentUp, and extentForward. This is similar to how you can represent an AABB with a 3d vector for center along with 3 floats: extentRight, extentUp, and extentForward. The difference is that for the parallelepiped those 3 extents are not 1 dimensional scalars, but are full vectors.
When finding the closest point on an AABB surface to a given point, you are basically taking that given point and clamping it to the AABB's volume. You would, for example, call Math.Clamp(point.x, AABB.Min.x, AABB.Max.x) and so on for Y and Z.
The resulting X,Y,Z would be the closest point on the AABB surface to the given point.
To do this for a parallelepiped you need to solve the "linear combination" (math keyword) of extentRight(ER), extentUp(EU), and extentForward(EF) to get the given point. In other words, what scalars do you have to multiply ER, EU, and EF by to get to the given point? When you find those scalars you need to clamp them between 0 and 1 and then multiply them again by ER, EU, and EF respectively to get that closest point on the surface of the parallelepiped. Be sure to offset the given point by the Parallelepiped's min position so that the whole calculation is done in its local space.
I didn't want to spend any extra time learning how to solve for a linear combination (it seems it involves things like using an "augmented matrix" and "gaussian elimination") otherwise I'd include that here too. This should get you or anyone else reading this off to the right track hopefully.
Edit:
Actually I think its a lot simpler and you don't need a parallelepiped. If you have access to the rotation (Vector3 or Quaternion) that rotated the cube you could get the inverse of that and use that inverse rotation to orbit the sphere around the cube so that the new scenario is just the normal axis aligned cube and the orbited sphere. Then you can do a normal AABB - sphere collision detection.

Grappling hook ray cast direction problems in Unity

Hey team I'm currently working on a 3rd person game where I would like to fire grappling hooks from the player to a point that is offset from the center of the camera.
I have a screen overlay canvas with Ui images for crosshairs. When the left shift is held down the crosshairs move outward from center along the x axis and return to center once shift is released, a bit like crosshair spread in games except I want to trigger the spread via the shift key. These crosshairs are meant to dictate the location the anchors of the grappling hook land, originating from the player and hitting whatever object is directly forward of the crosshairs. (imagine attack on titan ODM gear if you've seen it). I am looking for a way to ray cast from the player to the point forward of these crosshairs while they're offset from the center.
So far I have the grappling system set up and working but am having trouble with the direction parameter when I use the crosshair spread. It separates fine but where the hooks land in relation to the cross hairs are obviously out as I'm trying to use angle calculations at the moment instead of what is forward of these reticles.
I'm basically wondering if it is possible to use these screen overlay UI images to cast forward from or if there's a better way to accomplish the same thing. I have my doubts because they're screen overlay so I imagine their coordinates wont be attached to the camera as they appear.
Thanks in advance for your help.
What I would do is determine the location of the reticleson the screen, then (as Aybe suggested) use ScreenPointToRay or ViewportToRay (depending on if it's easier to get a pixel position or a fractional position of each reticle) to Physics.Raycast that ray from the camera into the scene to find where the rays collide. At this point, you have two world positions the player seems to want to shoot the hooks.:
Vector3 hookTarget1;
Vector3 hookTarget2;
So, now you actually have to fire the hooks - but as you know the hooks aren't being shot from the camera, they are being shot from the player, and they maybe offset by a bit. Let's call the originating points (which may have the same value):
Vector3 hookOrigin1;
Vector3 hookOrigin2;
So, then you can create Rays that originate from the hook origins and point at the targets:
Ray hookShot1 = new Ray(hookOrigin1, hookTarget1 - hookOrigin1);
Ray hookShot2 = new Ray(hookOrigin2, hookTarget2 - hookOrigin2);
Using these rays, you can do another Physics.Raycast if you would like, to confirm that there aren't any trees or other obstacles that are between the player and the target location - and if there are, that may be where the anchor should actually sink:
Vector3 anchorPoint1;
Vector3 anchorPoint2;
The segment between the origin of these rays and these anchor points would be appropriate for rendering the cable, calculating physics for how to move the player, as well as checking for collisions with world geometry that might cause the anchor to release.

Tracking Rotating Sprite

I am messing about in XNA and have run into a problem. I have a 48 * 48 sprite that I can keep track of its location in the game world by the top left corner of the sprite.
I want to be able to rotate the square and still keep track of the same point. For instance if I rotate 90degrees clockwise and the orginal X position was 200 the new X position should be 200 + 48(the size of the width of the image). Its fine for 90 degrees I am able to work that out in my head but each one in between is the problem!
I know there is probably some kind of formula to work this out.
Any help would be great! Oh the square is rotating on its center.
I'm just using spriteBatch.Draw()
spriteBatch.Draw( animations[currentAnimation].Texture,
Camera.WorldToScreen(WorldRectangle),
animations[currentAnimation].FrameRectangle,
color, rotationScale , new Vector2((float)frameHeight/2, (float)frameWidth/2), effect, TileMap.characterDepth);
If you have to keep track of a moving rotating sprite you can't use the top left corner, but its centroid. You already draw your sprite using the centroid to rotate it.
The problem is that the second parameter of your Draw call is a Rectangle, you sholud use a Vector2 position, instead.
You're building your application on top of a 3D graphics library. 3D graphics libraries are very good at solving this kind of problem! Break it down into smaller operations and let the library do the work for you.
First: it's easiest to think about these kinds of questions when you're working in model space rather than world space. In other words: you don't need to worry about where the rotating point is in absolute terms, you only need to worry about where it is relative to the untransformed model (in this case, your sprite without any rotation or translation).
So where is that? Simple:
var pt = new Vector3(-frameWidth / 2f, -frameHeight / 2f, 0f);
Your point of origin is the center of your sprite, so the center of your sprite in model space is (0, 0). This means that the top left corner of your sprite is half the width of the sprite in the negative x direction, and half the height of the sprite along the negative y direction.
Now create an object that represents the desired transformation. You can do this by creating a rotation matrix using XNA's built-in methods:
var transformation = Matrix.CreateRotationZ(MathHelper.ToRadians(90f));
Now apply the transformation to your original point:
var transformedPt = Vector3.Transform(pt, transformation);
This is still in model space, remember, so to get world coordinates you'll need to transform it into world space:
var transformedWorldX = transformedPt.X + spritePosition.X;
var transformedWorldY = transformedPt.Y + spritePosition.Y;
And there you go.

rotate cammera around center of object wpf

Expression blend enables you to import 3d models. I want to animate a 3d object with code. I just can't seem to figure out what are the property values that I have to modify in order to make an object rotate. Let me show you what I mean:
so if I want to rotate this object I could use the camera orbit tool and If I use it I can end up with something like:
I know I can create a storyboard and create the animation by modifying the object. I need to rotate the object along the x axis with a slider. If I modify just one value it will rotate in a weird way I actually have to change several properties if I wish to do so. For example when I am rotating the object along the x-axis with the camera orbit tool I can see that all these properties are changing. I need to figure out what is the algorithm being used to rotate the object.
The math to move the camera position around so that you appear to be rotating around the X axis is just the parametric equation of a circle:
where t is the angle from zero to 2 pi.
Imagine you are standing on the street looking at a house. The camera's coordinates have to follow a circle around the house and the latitude and longitude are continuously changing to keep the same distance from the house. So there is no one value you can change to make it rotate.
Once you know the camera position, the direction is just the difference between the origin and the camera position.
All this is not hard to calculate but there is an easier way. Instead, keep the camera fixed and rotate the object. This makes animations much easier. Here is an MSDN article contains examples of that approach, including animations:
3-D Transformations Overview
That article is meant for WPF and Visual Studio but you can easily adapt the same ideas to Expression Blend.

Categories