Question

I’m attempting to determine if a specific point lies inside a polyhedron. In my current implementation, the method I’m working on take the point we’re looking for an array of the faces of the polyhedron (triangles in this case, but it could be other polygons later). I’ve been trying to work from the info found here: http://softsurfer.com/Archive/algorithm_0111/algorithm_0111.htm

Below, you’ll see my “inside” method. I know that the nrml/normal thing is kind of weird .. it’s the result of old code. When I was running this it seemed to always return true no matter what input I give it. (This is solved, please see my answer below — this code is working now).

bool Container::inside(Point* point, float* polyhedron[3], int faces) {
  Vector* dS = Vector::fromPoints(point->X, point->Y, point->Z,
                 100, 100, 100);
  int T_e = 0;
  int T_l = 1;

  for (int i = 0; i < faces; i++) {
    float* polygon = polyhedron[i];

    float* nrml = normal(&polygon[0], &polygon[1], &polygon[2]);
    Vector* normal = new Vector(nrml[0], nrml[1], nrml[2]);
    delete nrml;

    float N = -((point->X-polygon[0][0])*normal->X + 
                (point->Y-polygon[0][1])*normal->Y +
                (point->Z-polygon[0][2])*normal->Z);
    float D = dS->dot(*normal);

    if (D == 0) {
      if (N < 0) {
        return false;
      }

      continue;
    }

    float t = N/D;

    if (D < 0) {
      T_e = (t > T_e) ? t : T_e;
      if (T_e > T_l) {
        return false;
      }
    } else {
      T_l = (t < T_l) ? t : T_l;
      if (T_l < T_e) {
        return false;
      }
    }
  }

  return true;
}

This is in C++ but as mentioned in the comments, it’s really very language agnostic.

Answer 1

It turns out that the problem was my reading of the algorithm referenced in the link above. I was reading:

N = - dot product of (P0-Vi) and ni;

as

N = - dot product of S and ni;

Having changed this, the code above now seems to work correctly. (I’m also updating the code in the question to reflect the correct solution).