Physically Based Modeling

Rigid Body Simulation

David Baraff
Pixar Animation Studios

Please note: This document is 2001 by David Baraff. This chapter may be freely
duplicated and distributed so long as no consideration is received in return, and
this copyright notice remains intact.
 Rigid Body Simulation

David Baraff
Pixar Animation Studios

Introduction
This portion of the course notes deals with the problem of rigid body dynamics. To help get you
started simulating rigid body motion, we’ve provided code fragments that implement most of the
concepts discussed in these notes. This segment of the course notes is divided into two parts. The first
part covers the motion of rigid bodies that are completely unconstrained in their allowable motion;
that is, simulations that aren’t concerned about collisions between rigid bodies. Given any external
forces acting on a rigid body, we’ll show how to simulate the motion of the body in response to these
forces. The mathematical derivations in these notes are meant to be fairly informal and intuitive.
The second part of the notes tackles the problem of constrained motion that arises when we
regard bodies as solid, and need to disallow inter-penetration. We enforce these non-penetration
constraints by computing appropriate contact forces between contacting bodies. Given values for
these contact forces, simulation proceeds exactly as in the unconstrained case: we simply apply all
the forces to the bodies and let the simulation unfold as though the motions of bodies are completely
unconstrained. If we have computed the contact forces correctly, the resulting motion of the bodies
will be free from inter-penetration. The computation of these contact forces is the most demanding
component of the entire simulation process.1

1
Collision detection (i.e. determining the points of contact between bodies) runs a close second though!

G1
 Part I. Unconstrained Rigid Body Dynamics

1 Simulation Basics
This portion of the course notes is geared towards a full implementation of rigid body motion. In this
section, we’ll show the basic structure for simulating the motion of a rigid body. In section 2, we’ll
define the terms, concepts, and equations we need to implement a rigid body simulator. Following
this, we’ll give some code to actually implement the equations we need. Derivations for some of the
concepts and equations we will be using will be left to appendix A.
The only thing you need to be familiar with at this point are the basic concepts (but not the numer-
ical details) of solving ordinary differential equations. If you’re not familiar with this topic, you’re
in luck: just turn back to the beginning of these course notes, and read the section on “Differential
Equation Basics.” You also might want to read the next section on “Particle Dynamics” as well,
although we’re about to repeat some of that material here anyway.
Simulating the motion of a rigid body is almost the same as simulating the motion of a particle,
so let’s start with particle simulation. The way we simulate a particle is as follows. We let a function
x(t) denote the particle’s location in world space (the space all particles or bodies occupy during
simulation) at time t. The function v(t) = ẋ(t) = dtd x(t) gives the velocity of the particle at time t.
The state of a particle at time t is the particle’s position and velocity. We generalize this concept by
defining a state vector X(t) for a system: for a single particle,
 
x(t)
X(t) = . (1–1)
v(t)

When we’re talking about an actual implementation, we have to “flatten” out X(t) into an array.
For a single particle, X(t) can be described as an array of six numbers: typically, we’d let the first
three elements of the array represent x(t), and the last three elements represent v(t). Later, when we
talk about state vectors X(t) that contain matrices as well as vectors, the same sort of operation is
done to flatten X(t) into an array. Of course, we’ll also have to reverse this process and turn an array
of numbers back into a state vector X(t). This all comes down to pretty simple bookkeeping though,
so henceforth, we’ll assume that we know how to convert any sort of state vector X(t) to an array
(of the appropriate length) and vice versa. (For a simple example involving particles, look through
the “Particle System Dynamics” section of these notes.)
For a system with n particles, we enlarge X(t) to be
 
x1 (t)
 v1 (t) 
 
 
X(t) =  ...  (1–2)
 
 xn (t) 
vn (t)

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where xi (t) and vi (t) are the position and velocity of the ith particle. Working with n particles is no
harder than working with one particle, so we’ll let X(t) be the state vector for a single particle for
now (and when we get to it later, a single rigid body).
To actually simulate the motion of our particle, we need to know one more thing—the force
acting on the particle at time t. We’ll define F(t) as the force acting on our particle at time t. The
function F(t) is the sum of all the forces acting on the particle: gravity, wind, spring forces, etc. If
the particle has mass m, then the change of X over time is given by
   
d d x(t) v(t)
X(t) = = . (1–3)
dt dt v(t) F(t)/m

Given any value of X(t), equation (1–3) describes how X(t) is instantaneously changing at time t.
A simulation starts with some initial conditions for X(0), (i.e. values for x(0) and v(0)) and then
uses a numerical equation solver to track the change or “flow” of X over time, for as long as we’re
interested in. If all we want to know is the particle’s location one second from now, we ask the solver
to compute X(1), assuming that time units are in seconds. If we’re going to animate the motion of
the particle, we’d want to compute X( 30 1
), X( 30
2
) and so on.
The numerical method used by the solver is relatively unimportant with respect to our actual
implementation. Let’s look at how we’d actually interact with a numerical solver, in a C++-like
language. Assume we have access to a numerical solver, which we’ll generically write as a function
named ode. Typically, ode has the following specification:

typedef void (*DerivFunc)(double t, double x[], double xdot[]);

void ode(double x0[], double xEnd[], int len, double t0,

double t1, DerivFunc dxdt);

We pass an initial state vector to ode as an array x0. The solver ode knows nothing about the
inherent structure of x0. Since solvers can handle problems of arbitrary dimension, we also have to
pass the length len of x0. (For a system of n particles, we’d obviously have len = 6n.) We also
pass the solver the starting and ending times of the simulation, t0 and t1. The solver’s goal is to
compute the state vector at time t1 and return it in the array xEnd.
We also pass a function Dxdt() to ode. Given an array y that encodes a state vector X(t) and
a time t, Dxdt() must compute and return dtd X(t) in the array xdot. (The reason we must pass
t to Dxdt() is that we may have time-varying forces acting in our system. In that case, Dxdt()
would have to know “what time it is” to determine the value of those forces.) In tracing the flow of
X(t) from t0 to t1, the solver ode is allowed to call Dxdt() as often as it likes. Given that we
have such a routine ode, the only work we need to do is to code up the routine Dxdt() which we’ll
give as a parameter to ode.
Simulating rigid bodies follows exactly the same mold as simulating particles. The only differ-
ence is that the state vector X(t) for a rigid body holds more information, and the derivative dtd X(t) is
a little more complicated. However, we’ll use exactly the same paradigm of tracking the movement
of a rigid body using a solver ode, which we’ll supply with a function Dxdt().

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2 Rigid Body Concepts
The goal of this section is to develop an analogue to equation (1–3), for rigid bodies. The final
differential equation we develop is given in section 2.11. In order to do this though, we need to define
a lot of concepts first and relations first. Some of the longer derivations are found in appendix A. In
the next section, we’ll show how to write the function Dxdt() needed by the numerical solver ode
to compute the derivative dtd X(t) developed in this section.

2.1 Position and Orientation

The location of a particle in space at time t can be described as a vector x(t), which describes the
translation of the particle from the origin. Rigid bodies are more complicated, in that in addition to
translating them, we can also rotate them. To locate a rigid body in world space, we’ll use a vector
x(t), which describes the translation of the body. We must also describe the rotation of the body,
which we’ll do (for now) in terms of a 3 × 3 rotation matrix R(t). We will call x(t) and R(t) the
spatial variables of a rigid body.
A rigid body, unlike a particle, occupies a volume of space and has a particular shape. Because a
rigid body can undergo only rotation and translation, we define the shape of a rigid body in terms of
a fixed and unchanging space called body space. Given a geometric description of the body in body
space, we use x(t) and R(t) to transform the body-space description into world space (figure 1). In
order to simplify some equations we’ll be using, we’ll require that our description of the rigid body
in body space be such that the center of mass of the body lies at the origin, (0, 0, 0). We’ll define the
center of mass more precisely later, but for now, the center of mass can be thought of as a point in the
rigid body that lies at the geometric center of the body. In describing the body’s shape, we require
that this geometric center lie at (0, 0, 0) in body space. If we agree that R(t) specifies a rotation of
the body about the center of mass, then a fixed vector r in body space will be rotated to the world-
space vector R(t)r at time t. Likewise, if p0 is an arbitrary point on the rigid body, in body space,
then the world-space location p(t) of p0 is the result of first rotating p0 about the origin and then
translating it:

p(t) = R(t) p0 + x(t). (2–1)

Since the center of mass of the body lies at the origin, the world-space location of the center of
mass is always given directly by x(t). This lets us attach a very physical meaning to x(t) by saying
that x(t) is the location of the center of mass in world space at time t. We can also attach a physical
meaning to R(t). Consider the x axis in body space i.e. the vector (1, 0, 0). At time t, this vector
has direction
 
1
R(t)  0 
0

in world space. If we write out the components of R(t) as

 
r xx r yx rzx
R(t) =  r xy r yy rzy  , (2–2)
r xz r yz rzz

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 body space world space y'

z x(t) z'

p0 y p(t)
0
x'
x z

Figure 1: The center of mass is transformed to the point x(t) in world space, at time t. The fixed x, y,
and z axes of the body in body space transform to the vectors x0 = R(t)x, y0 = R(t)y and z0 = R(t)z.
The fixed point p0 in body space is transformed to the point p(t) = R(t) p0 + x(t).

then
   
1 r xx
R(t)  0  =  r xy  (2–3)
0 r xz
which is the first column of R(t). The physical meaning of R(t) is that R(t)’s first column gives the
direction that the rigid body’s x axis points in, when transformed to world space at time t. Similarly,
the second and third columns of R(t),
   
r yx rzx
 r yy  and  rzy 
r yz rzz
are the directions of the y and z axes of the rigid body in world space at time t (figure 2).

2.2 Linear Velocity

For simplicity, we’ll call x(t) and R(t) the position and orientation of the body at time t. The next
thing we need to do is define how the position and orientation change over time. This means we
need expressions for ẋ(t) and Ṙ(t). Since x(t) is the position of the center of mass in world space,
ẋ(t) is the velocity of the center of mass in world space. We’ll define the linear velocity v(t) as this
velocity:
v(t) = ẋ(t). (2–4)
If we imagine that the orientation of the body is fixed, then the only movement the body can undergo
is a pure translation. The quantity v(t) gives the velocity of this translation.

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 world space y'

R(t) = [ x' y' z' ]

z'

x'
z

Figure 2: Physical interpretation of the orientation matrix R(t). At time t, the columns of R(t) are
the world-space directions that the body-space x, y, and z axes transform to.

2.3 Angular Velocity

In addition to translating, a rigid body can also spin. Imagine however that we freeze the position of
the center of mass in space. Any movement of the points of the body must therefore be due to the
body spinning about some axis that passes through the center of mass. (Otherwise the center of mass
would itself be moving). We can describe that spin as a vector ω(t). The direction of ω(t) gives the
direction of the axis about which the body is spinning (figure 3). The magnitude of ω(t), |ω(t)|, tells
how fast the body is spinning. |ω(t)| has the dimensions of revolutions/time; thus, |ω(t)| relates the
angle through which the body will rotate over a given period of time, if the angular velocity remains
constant. The quantity ω(t) is called the angular velocity.
For linear velocity, x(t) and v(t) are related by v(t) = dtd x(t). How are R(t) and ω(t) related?
(Clearly, Ṙ(t) cannot be ω(t), since R(t) is a matrix, and ω(t) is a vector.) To answer this question,
let’s remind ourselves of the physical meaning of R(t). We know that the columns of R(t) tell us
the directions of the transformed x, y and z body axes at time t. That means that the columns of Ṙ(t)
must describe the velocity with which the x, y, and z axes are being transformed. To discover the
relationship between ω(t) and R(t), let’s examine how the change of an arbitrary vector in a rigid
body is related to the angular velocity ω(t).
Figure 4 shows a rigid body with angular velocity ω(t). Consider a vector r(t) at time t specified
in world space. Suppose that we consider this vector fixed to the body; that is, r(t) moves along with
the rigid body through world space. Since r(t) is a direction, it is independent of any translational
effects; in particular, ṙ(t) is independent of v(t). To study ṙ(t), we decompose r(t) into vectors a
and b, where a is parallel to ω(t) and b is perpendicular to ω(t). Suppose the rigid body were to
maintain a constant angular velocity, so that the tip of r(t) traces out a circle centered on the ω(t) axis
(figure 4). The radius of this circle is |b|. Since the tip of the vector r(t) is instantaneously moving
along this circle, the instantaneous change of r(t) is perpendicular to both b and ω(t). Since the tip
of r(t) is moving in a circle of radius b, the instantaneous velocity of r(t) has magnitude |b||ω(t)|.

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 ω (t)

v(t)

x(t)
y

Figure 3: Linear velocity v(t) and angular velocity ω(t) of a rigid body.

Since b and ω(t) are perpendicular, their cross product has magnitude

|ω(t) × b| = |ω(t)| |b|. (2–5)

Putting this together, we can write ṙ(t) = ω(t) × (b). However, since r(t) = a + b and a is parallel
to ω(t), we have ω(t) × a = 0 and thus

ṙ(t) = ω(t) × b = ω(t) × b + ω(t) × a = ω(t) × (b + a). (2–6)

Thus, we can simply express the rate of change of a vector as

ṙ(t) = ω(t) × r(t). (2–7)

Let’s put all this together now. At time t, we know that the direction of the x axis of the rigid
body in world space is the first column of R(t), which is
 
r xx
 r xy  .
r xz

At time t, the derivative of the first column of R(t) is just the rate of change of this vector: using the
cross product rule we just discovered, this change is
 
r xx
ω(t) ×  r xy  .
r xz

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 ω (t)

ω (t) × b

a
r(t) = a + b

Figure 4: The rate of change of a rotating vector. As the tip of r(t) spins about the ω(t) axis, it traces
out a circle of diameter |b|. The speed of the tip of r(t) is |ω(t)||b|.

The same obviously holds for the other two columns of R(t). This means that we can write
      
r xx r yx rzx
Ṙ =  ω(t) ×  r xy  ω(t) ×  r yy  ω(t) ×  rzy   . (2–8)
r xz r yz rzz

This is too cumbersome an expression to tote around though. To simplify things, we’ll use the
following trick. If a and b are 3-vectors, then a × b is the vector
 
a y bz − b y az
 −a x bz + b x az  .
ax b y − bx a y

Given the vector a, let us define a∗ to be the matrix

 
0 −az a y
 az 0 −a x  .
−a y a x 0

Then2
    
0 −az a y bx a y bz − b y az
a∗ b =  a z 0 −a x   b y  =  −a x bz + b x az  = a × b. (2–9)
−a y a x 0 bz ax b y − bx a y
2
This looks a little too “magical” at first. Did someone discover this identity accidentally? Is it a relation that just
happens to work? This construct can be derived by considering what’s known as infinitesimal rotations. The interested
reader might wish to read chapter 4.8 of Goldstein[10] for a more complete derivation of the a∗ matrix.

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G8 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

 Using the “∗” notation, we can rewrite Ṙ(t) more simply as
      
r xx r yx rzx
Ṙ(t) =  ω(t)∗  r xy  ω(t)∗  r yy  ω(t)∗  rzy   . (2–10)
r xz r yz rzz

By the rules of matrix multiplication, we can factor this into

     
r xx r yx rzx
Ṙ(t) = ω(t)∗   r xy   r yy   rzy   (2–11)
r xz r yz rzz

which is a matrix-matrix multiplication. But since the matrix on the right is R(t) itself, we get simply
that

Ṙ(t) = ω(t)∗ R(t). (2–12)

This, at last, gives us the relation we wanted between Ṙ(t) and ω(t). Note the correspondence
between ṙ(t) = ω(t) × r(t) for a vector, and Ṙ(t) = ω(t)∗ R(t) for the rotation matrix.

2.4 Mass of a Body

In order to work out some derivations, we’ll need to (conceptually) perform some integrations over
the volume of our rigid body. To make these derivations simpler, we’re going to temporarily imagine
that a rigid body is made up of a large number of small particles. The particles are indexed from
1 to N. The mass of the ith particle is mi , and each particle has a (constant) location r0i in body
space. The location of the ith particle in world space at time t, denoted ri (t), is therefore given by
the formula

ri (t) = R(t)r0i + x(t). (2–13)

The total mass of the body, M, is the sum

X
N
M= mi . (2–14)
i=1

(Henceforth, summations are assumed to be summed from 1 to N with index variable i.)

2.5 Velocity of a Particle

The velocity ṙ i (t) of the ith particle is obtained by differentiating equation (2–13): using the relation
Ṙ(t) = ω∗ R(t), we obtain

ṙ i (t) = ω∗ R(t)r0i + v(t). (2–15)

We can rewrite this as

ṙ i (t) = ω(t)∗ R(t)r0i + v(t)
= ω(t)∗ (R(t)r0 i + x(t) − x(t)) + v(t) (2–16)
∗
= ω(t) (ri (t) − x(t)) + v(t)

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 ω (t)

x(t)

v(t) ri(t)
y

ω (t) × ( ri(t) – x(t))

z

x v(t) + ω (t) × ( ri(t) – x(t)) v(t)

Figure 5: The velocity of the ith point of a rigid body in world space. The velocity of ri (t) can be
decomposed into a linear term v(t) and an angular term ω(t) × (ri (t) − x(t)).

using the definition of ri (t) from equation (2–13). Recall from the definition of the “∗” operator that
ω(t)∗ a = ω(t) × a for any vector a. Using this, we can simply write

ṙ i (t) = ω(t) × (ri (t) − x(t)) + v(t). (2–17)

Note that this separates the velocity of a point on a rigid body into two components (figure 5): a
linear component v(t), and an angular component ω × (ri (t) − x(t)).

2.6 Center of Mass

Our definition of the center of mass is going to enable us to likewise separate the dynamics of bodies
into linear and angular components. The center of mass of a body in world space is defined to be
P
mi ri (t)
(2–18)
M
where M is the mass of the body (i.e. the sum of the individual masses mi ). When we say that we
are using a center of mass coordinate system, we mean that in body space,
 
P 0
mir0i
=0= 0 . (2–19)
M
0
P
Note that this implies that mir0i = 0 as well.
We have spoken of x(t) as being the location of the center of mass at time t. Is this true? Yes:
since the ith particle has position ri (t) = R(t)r0i + x(t) at time t, the center of mass at time t is
P P P P P
miri (t) mi (R(t)r0i + x(t)) R(t) mir0i + mi x(t) mi
= = = x(t) = x(t).
M M M M

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 τi(t) = ( ri(t) – x(t)) × Fi(t)

ri(t)
x(t)
y
Fi(t)

Figure 6: The torque τi (t) due to a force Fi (t) acting at ri (t) on a rigid body.

Additionally, the relation

X X X
mi (ri (t) − x(t)) = mi (R(t)r0 i + x(t) − x(t)) = R(t) m i r0 i = 0 (2–20)

is also very useful.

2.7 Force and Torque

When we imagine a force acting on a rigid body due to some external influence (e.g. gravity, wind,
contact forces), we imagine that the force acts on a particular particle of the body. (Remember that
our particle model is conceptual only. We can have a force act at any geometrical location on or inside
the body, because we can always imagine that there happens to be a particle at that exact location.)
The location of the particle the force acts on defines the location at which the force acts. We will let
Fi (t) denote the total force from external forces acting on the ith particle at time t. Also, we define
the external torque τi (t) acting on the ith particle as

τi (t) = (ri (t) − x(t)) × Fi (t). (2–21)

Torque differs from force in that the torque on a particle depends on the location ri (t) of the
particle, relative to the center of mass x(t). We can intuitively think of the direction of τi (t) as
being the axis the body would spin about due to Fi (t), if the center of mass were held firmly in place
(figure 6).
The total external force F(t) acting on the body is the sum of the Fi (t):
X
F(t) = Fi (t) (2–22)

while the total external torque is defined similarly as

X X
τ(t) = τi (t) = (ri (t) − x(t)) × Fi (t). (2–23)

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Note that F(t) conveys no information about where the various forces acted on the body; however,
τ(t) does tell us something about the distribution of the forces Fi (t) over the body.

2.8 Linear Momentum

The linear momentum p of a particle with mass m and velocity v is defined as

p = mv. (2–24)

The total linear momentum P(t) of a rigid body is the sum of the products of the mass and velocity
of each particle:
X
P(t) = miṙ i (t). (2–25)

From equation (2–17), the velocity ṙ i (t) of the ith particle is ṙ i (t) = v(t) + ω(t) × (ri (t) − x(t)).
Thus, the total linear momentum of the body is
X
P(t) = miṙ i (t)
X 
= mi v(t) + mi ω(t) × (ri (t) − x(t)) (2–26)
X X
= mi v(t) + ω(t) × mi (ri (t) − x(t)) .

Because we are using a center of mass coordinate system, we can apply equation (2–20) and ob-
tain
X X 
P(t) = mi v(t) = mi v(t) = Mv(t). (2–27)

This gives us the nice result that the total linear momentum of our rigid body is the same as if the
body was simply a particle with mass M and velocity v(t). Because of this, we have a simple trans-
formation between P(t) and v(t): P(t) = Mv(t) and v(t) = P(t)/M. Since M is a constant,

Ṗ(t)
v̇(t) = . (2–28)
M
The concept of linear momentum lets us express the effect of the total force F(t) on a rigid body
quite simply. Appendix A derives the relation

Ṗ(t) = F(t) (2–29)

which says that the change in linear momentum is equivalent to the total force acting on a body. Note
that P(t) tells us nothing about the rotational velocity of a body, which is good, because F(t) also
conveys nothing about the change of rotational velocity of a body!
Since the relationship between P(t) and v(t) is simple, we will be using P(t) as a state variable
for our rigid body, instead of v(t). We could of course let v(t) be a state variable, and use the
relation
F(t)
v̇(t) = . (2–30)
M
However, using P(t) instead of v(t) as a state variable will be more consistent with the way we will
be dealing with angular velocity and acceleration.

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2.9 Angular Momentum
While the concept of linear momentum is pretty intuitive (P(t) = Mv(t)), the concept of angular mo-
mentum (for a rigid body) is not. The only reason that one even bothers with the angular momentum
of a rigid body is that it lets you write simpler equations than you would get if you stuck with angular
velocity. With that in mind, it’s probably best not to worry about attaching an intuitive physical
explanation to angular momentum—all in all, it’s a most unintuitive concept. Angular momentum
ends up simplifying equations because it is conserved in nature, while angular velocity is not: if you
have a body floating through space with no torque acting on it, the body’s angular momentum is
constant. This is not true for a body’s angular velocity though: even if the angular momentum of a
body is constant, the body’s angular velocity may not be! Consequently, a body’s angular velocity
can vary even when no force acts on the body. Because of this, it ends up being simpler to choose
angular momentum as a state variable over angular velocity.
For linear momentum, we have the relation P(t) = Mv(t). Similarly, we define the total angular
momentum L(t) of a rigid body by the equation L(t) = I(t)ω(t), where I(t) is a 3 × 3 matrix (tech-
nically a rank-two tensor) called the inertia tensor, which we will describe momentarily. The inertia
tensor I(t) describes how the mass in a body is distributed relative to the body’s center of mass. The
tensor I(t) depends on the orientation of a body, but does not depend on the body’s translation. Note
that for both the angular and the linear case, momentum is a linear function of velocity—it’s just that
in the angular case the scaling factor is a matrix, while it’s simply a scalar in the linear case. Note
also that L(t) is independent of any translational effects, while P(t) is independent of any rotational
effects.
The relationship between L(t) and the total torque τ(t) is very simple: appendix A derives

L̇(t) = τ(t), (2–31)

analogous to the relation Ṗ(t) = F(t).

2.10 The Inertia Tensor

The inertia tensor I(t) is the scaling factor between angular momentum L(t) and angular veloc-
ity ω(t). At a given time t, let ri0 be the displacement of the ith particle from x(t) by defining
ri0 = ri (t) − x(t). The tensor I(t) is expressed in terms of ri0 as the symmetric matrix
 
mi (ri0 2y + ri0 2z ) −mi ri0 x ri0 y −miri0 x ri0 z
X 
I(t) =  −miri0 y ri0 x mi (ri0 2x + ri0 2z ) −mi ri0 y ri0 z  (2–32)
 
−miri0 z ri0 x 0 r0
−miriz iy mi (ri0 2x + ri0 2y )

For an actual implementation, we replace the finite sums with integrals over a body’s volume in
world space. The mass terms mi are replaced by a density function. At first glance, it seems that
we would need to evaluate these integrals to find I(t) whenever the orientation R(t) changes. This
would be prohibitively expensive to do during a simulation unless the body’s shape was so simple
(for example, a sphere or cube) that that the integrals could be evaluated symbolically.
Fortunately, by using body-space coordinates we can cheaply compute the inertia tensor for any
orientation R(t) in terms of a precomputed integral in body-space coordinates. (This integral is typ-
ically computed before the simulation begins and should be regarded as one of the input parameters

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G13 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

describing a physical property of the body.) Using the fact that ri0 T ri0 = ri0 2x + ri0 2y + ri0 2z , we can rewrite
I(t) as the difference
   
1 0 0 mi ri0 2x mi ri0 x ri0 y miri0 x riz
0
X T    
I(t) = mi ri0 ri0 
 0 1 0  −  mir0 r0
  i y x i m i r 02
i y m i r i
0 r0 
y iz  (2–33)
0 0 1 mi ri0 z ri0 x miri0 z ri0 y miri0 2z

Taking the outer product multiplication of ri0 with itself, that is

 
    ri0 2x ri0 x ri0 y ri0 x ri0 z
ri0 x ri0 x ri0 y ri0 z  0 0 
ri0 ri0 =  ri0 y  = ri0 2y ri0 x ri0 z 
T
 ri y ri x  (2–34)
ri0 z 0 r0 0 r0 0 2
riz ix riz iy ri z

and letting 1 denote the 3 × 3 identity matrix, we can express I(t) simply as
X
mi ((ri0 ri0 )1 − ri0 ri0 )
T T
I(t) = (2–35)

How does this help?

Since ri (t) = R(t)r0i + x(t) where r0i is a constant, ri0 = R(t)r0i . Then, since R(t)R(t) T = 1,

X
mi ((ri0 ri0 )1 − ri0 ri0 )
T T
I(t) =
X
= mi ((R(t)r0 i ) T (R(t)r0 i )1 − (R(t)r0 i )(R(t)r0 i ) T )
X (2–36)
= mi (r0 iT R(t) T R(t)r0i 1 − R(t)r0i r0 iT R(t) T )
X
= mi ((r0 iT r0i )1 − R(t)r0i r0 iT R(t) T ).

Since r0 iT r0 i is a scalar, we can rearrange things by writing

X
I(t) = mi ((r0 iT r0i )1 − R(t)r0i r0 iT R(t) T )
X
= mi (R(t)(r0 iT r0i )R(t) T 1 − R(t)r0i r0 iT R(t) T ) (2–37)
X 
= R(t) mi ((r0 iT r0 i )1 − r0 i r0 iT ) R(t) T .

If we define Ibody as the matrix

X
Ibody = mi ((r0 iT r0i )1 − r0ir0 iT ) (2–38)

then from the previous equation we have

I(t) = R(t)Ibody R(t) T . (2–39)

Since Ibody is specified in body-space, it is constant over the simulation. Thus, by precomputing Ibody
for a body before the simulation begins, we can easily compute I(t) from Ibody and the orientation
matrix R(t). Section 5.1 derives the body-space inertia tensor for a rectangular object in terms of an
integral over the body’s volume in body space.

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G14 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

 Also, the inverse of I(t) is given by the formula

−1
I −1 (t) = R(t)Ibody R(t) T

−1 −1 (2–40)
= R(t) T Ibody R(t)−1
−1
= R(t)Ibody R(t) T

T
since, for rotation matrices, R(t) T = R(t)−1 and R(t) T −1 is also a constant
= R(t). Clearly, Ibody
during the simulation.

2.11 Rigid Body Equations of Motion

Finally, we have covered all the concepts we need to define the state vector X(t)! For a rigid body,
we will define X(t) as
 
x(t)
 R(t) 
X(t) =  
 P(t)  . (2–41)
L(t)

Thus, the state of a rigid body is its position and orientation (describing spatial information), and its
linear and angular momentum (describing velocity information). The mass M of the body and body-
space inertia tensor Ibody are constants, which we assume we know when the simulation begins. At
any given time, the auxiliary quantities I(t), ω(t) and v(t) are computed by
P(t)
v(t) = , I(t) = R(t)Ibody R(t) T and ω(t) = I(t)−1 L(t). (2–42)
M
d
The derivative dt X(t) is
   
x(t) v(t)
d d   
R(t)   ω(t)∗ R(t) 
X(t) =  = . (2–43)
dt dt  P(t)   F(t) 
L(t) τ(t)

The next section gives an implementation for the function Dxdt() that computes dtd X(t).
One final note: rather than represent the orientation of the body as a matrix R(t) in X(t), it is
better to use quaternions. Section 4 discusses using quaternions in place of rotation matrices. Briefly,
a quaternion is a type of four element vector that can be used to represent a rotation. If we replace
R(t) in X(t) with a quaternion q(t), we can treat R(t) as an auxiliary variable that is computed
directly from q(t), just as ω(t) is computed from L(t). Section 4 derives a formula analogous to
Ṙ(t) = ω(t)∗ R(t), that expresses q̇(t) in terms of q(t) and ω(t).

d
3 Computing dt X(t)
Lets consider an implementation of the function Dxdt() for rigid bodies. The code is written
in C++, and we’ll assume that we have datatypes (classes) called matrix and triple which
implement, respectively, 3 × 3 matrices and points in 3-space. Using these datatypes, we’ll represent

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G15 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

a rigid body by the structure

struct RigidBody {
/* Constant quantities */
double mass; /* mass M */
matrix Ibody, /* Ibody */
Ibodyinv; −1
/* Ibody (inverse of Ibody ) */

/* State variables */
triple x; /* x(t) */
matrix R; /* R(t) */
triple P, /* P(t) */
L; /* L(t) */

/* Derived quantities (auxiliary variables) */

matrix Iinv; /* I −1 (t) */
triple v, /* v(t) */
omega; /* ω(t) */

/* Computed quantities */
triple force, /* F(t) */
torque; /* τ(t) */
};

and assume a global array of bodies

RigidBody Bodies[NBODIES];

The constant quantities mass, Ibody and Ibodyinv are assumed to have been calculated for
each member of the array Bodies, before simulation begins. Also, the initial conditions for each
rigid body are specified by assigning values to the state variables x, R, P and L of each member of
Bodies. The implementation in this section represents orientation with a rotation matrix; section 4
describes the changes necessary to represent orientation by a quaternion.
We communicate with the differential equation solver ode by passing arrays of real numbers.
Several bookkeeping routines are required:

/* Copy the state information into an array */

void StateToArray(RigidBody *rb, double *y)
{
*y++ = rb->x[0]; /* x component of position */
*y++ = rb->x[1]; /* etc. */
*y++ = rb->x[2];

for(int i = 0; i < 3; i++) /* copy rotation matrix */

for(int j = 0; j < 3; j++)
*y++ = rb->R[i,j];

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G16 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

 *y++ = rb->P[0];
*y++ = rb->P[1];
*y++ = rb->P[2];

*y++ = rb->L[0];
*y++ = rb->L[1];
*y++ = rb->L[2];
}

and

/* Copy information from an array into the state variables */

void ArrayToState(RigidBody *rb, double *y)
{
rb->x[0] = *y++;
rb->x[1] = *y++;
rb->x[2] = *y++;

for(int i = 0; i < 3; i++)

for(int j = 0; j < 3; j++)
rb->R[i,j] = *y++;

rb->P[0] = *y++;
rb->P[1] = *y++;
rb->P[2] = *y++;

rb->L[0] = *y++;
rb->L[1] = *y++;
rb->L[2] = *y++;

/* Compute auxiliary variables... */

/* v(t) = P(t)
M */
rb->v = rb->P / mass;

/* I −1 (t) = R(t)Ibody
−1 R(t) T */

rb->Iinv = R * Ibodyinv * Transpose(R);

/* ω(t) = I −1 (t)L(t) */
rb->omega = rb->Iinv * rb->L;
}

Note that ArrayToState is responsible for computing values for the auxiliary variables Iinv,
v and omega. We’ll assume that the appropriate arithmetic operations have been defined between
real numbers, triple’s and matrix’s, and that Transpose returns the transpose of a matrix.

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G17 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

 Examining these routines, we see that each rigid body’s state is represented by 3 + 9 + 3 + 3 = 18
numbers. Transfers between all the members of Bodies and an array y of size 18 · NBODIES are
implemented as

#define STATE_SIZE 18

void ArrayToBodies(double x[])

{
for(int i = 0; i < NBODIES; i++)
ArrayToState(&Bodies[i], &x[i * STATE_SIZE]);
}

and

void BodiesToArray(double x[])

{
for(int i = 0; i < NBODIES; i++)
StateToArray(&Bodies[i], &x[i * STATE_SIZE]);
}

Now we can implement Dxdt(). Let’s assume that the routine

void ComputeForceAndTorque(double t, RigidBody *rb);

computes the force F(t) and torque τ(t) acting on the rigid body *rb at time t, and stores F(t)
and τ(t) in rb->force and rb->torque respectively. ComputeForceAndTorquetakes into
account all forces and torques: gravity, wind, interaction with other bodies etc. Using this routine,
we’ll define Dxdt() as

void Dxdt(double t, double x[], double xdot[])

{
/* put data in x[] into Bodies[] */
ArrayToBodies(x);

for(int i = 0; i < NBODIES; i++)

{
ComputeForceAndTorque(t, &Bodies[i]);
DdtStateToArray(&Bodies[i],
&xdot[i * STATE_SIZE]);
}
}

The numerical solver ode calls calls Dxdt() and is responsible for allocating enough space for the
arrays y, and xdot (STATE_SIZE · NBODIES worth for each). The function which does the real
work of computing dtd X(t) and storing it in the array xdot is ddtStateToArray:

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 void DdtStateToArray(RigidBody *rb, double *xdot)
{
/* copy dtd x(t) = v(t) into xdot */
*xdot++ = rb->v[0];
*xdot++ = rb->v[1];
*xdot++ = rb->v[2];

/* Compute Ṙ(t) = ω(t)∗ R(t) */

matrix Rdot = Star(rb->omega) * rb->R;

/* copy Ṙ(t) into array */

for(int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
for(int j = 0; j < 3; j++)
*xdot++ = Rdot[i,j];

*xdot++ = rb->force[0]; /* d
dt P(t) = F(t) */
*xdot++ = rb->force[1];
*xdot++ = rb->force[2];

*xdot++ = rb->torque[0]; /* d
dt L(t) = τ(t) */
*xdot++ = rb->torque[1];
*xdot++ = rb->torque[2];
}

The routine Star, used to calculate Ṙ(t) is defined as

matrix Star(triple a);

and returns the matrix

 
0 −a[2] a[1]
 a[2] 0 −a[0]  .
−a[1] a[0] 0

Given all of the above, actually performing a simulation is simple. Assume that the state vari-
ables of all NBODIES rigid bodies are initialized by a routine InitStates. We’ll have our simu-
1
lation run for 10 seconds, calling a routine DisplayBodies every 24 th of a second to display the
bodies:

void RunSimulation()
{
double x0[STATE_SIZE * NBODIES],
xFinal[STATE_SIZE * NBODIES];

InitStates();
BodiesToArray(xFinal);

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G19 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

 for(double t = 0; t < 10.0; t += 1./24.)
{
/* copy xFinal back to x0 */
for(int i = 0; i < STATE_SIZE * NBODIES; i++)
{
x0[i] = xFinal[i];

ode(x0, xFinal, STATE_SIZE * NBODIES,

t, t+1./24., Dxdt);

dt X(t + 24 )
d 1
/* copy into state variables */

ArrayToBodies(xFinal);
DisplayBodies();
}
}

4 Quaternions vs. Rotation Matrices

There is a better way to represent the orientation of a rigid body than using a 3 × 3 rotation matrix.
For a number of reasons, unit quaternions, a type of four element vector normalized to unit length,
are a better choice than rotation matrices[16].
For rigid body simulation, the most important reason to avoid using rotation matrices is because
of numerical drift. Suppose that we keep track of the orientation of a rigid body according to the
formula

Ṙ(t) = ω(t)∗ R(t).

As we update R(t) using this formula (that is, as we integrate this equation), we will inevitably
encounter drift. Numerical error will build up in the coefficients of R(t) so that R(t) will no longer
be precisely a rotation matrix. Graphically, the effect would be that applying R(t) to a body would
cause a skewing effect.
This problem can be alleviated by representing rotations with unit quaternions. Since quater-
nions have only four parameters, there is only one extra variable being used to describe the three
freedoms of the rotation. In contrast, a rotation matrix uses nine parameters to describe three degrees
of freedom; therefore, the degree of redundancy is noticeably lower for quaternions than rotation
matrices. As a result, quaternions experience far less drift than rotation matrices. If it does become
necessary to account for drift in a quaternion, it is because the quaternion has lost its unit magnitude. 3
This is easily correctable by renormalizing the quaternion to unit length. Because of these two
properties, it is desirable to represent the orientation of a body directly as a unit quaternion q(t).
We will still express angular velocity as a vector ω(t). The orientation matrix R(t), which is needed
to compute I −1 (t), will be computed as an auxiliary variable from q(t).
3
Any quaternion of unit length corresponds to a rotation, so quaternions deviate from representing rotations only if
they lose their unit length. These notes will deal with that problem in a very simplistic way.

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G20 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

 We will write a quaternion s + v x i + v y j + vz k as the pair

[s, v].

Using this notation, quaternion multiplication is

[s1 , v1 ][s2 , v2 ] = [s1 s2 − v1 · v2 , s1 v2 + s2 v1 + v1 × v2 ]. (4–1)

A rotation of θ radians about a unit axis u is represented by the unit quaternion

[cos(θ/2), sin(θ/2)u].

In using quaternions to represent rotations, if q1 and q2 indicate rotations, then q2 q1 represents the
composite rotation of q1 followed by q2 .4 In a moment, we’ll show how to change the routines of
section 3 to handle the quaternion representation for orientation. Before we can make these changes
though, we’ll need a formula for q̇(t). Appendix B derives the formula

q̇(t) = 12 ω(t)q(t). (4–2)

where the multiplication ω(t)q(t) is a shorthand for multiplication between the quaternions [0, ω(t)]
and q(t). Note the similarity between equation (4–2) and

Ṙ(t) = ω(t)∗ R(t).

To actually use a quaternion representation, we’ll need to redefine the type RigidBody:

struct RigidBody {
/* Constant quantities */
double mass; /* mass M */
matrix Ibody, /* Ibody */
Ibodyinv; −1
/* Ibody (inverse of Ibody ) */

/* State variables */
triple x; /* x(t) */
quaternion q; /* q(t) */
triple P, /* P(t) */
L; /* L(t) */

/* Derived quantities (auxiliary variables) */

matrix Iinv, /* I −1 (t) */
R; /* R(t) */
triple v, /* v(t) */
omega; /* ω(t) */

/* Computed quantities */
4
This is according to the convention that the rotation of a point p by a quaternion q is qpq−1 . Be warned! This is
opposite the convention for rotation in the original paper Shoemake[16], but it is in correspondence with some more recent
versions of Shoemake’s article. Writing a composite rotation as q2 q1 parallels our matrix notation for composition of
rotations.

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G21 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

 triple force, /* F(t) */
torque; /* τ(t) */
};

Next, in the routine StateToArray, we’ll replace the double loop

for(int i = 0; i < 3; i++) /* copy rotation matrix */

for(int j = 0; j < 3; j++)
*y++ = rb->R[i,j];
with

/*
* Assume that a quaternion is represented in
* terms of elements ‘r’ for the real part,
* and ‘i’, ‘j’, and ‘k’ for the vector part.
*/

*y++ = rb->q.r;
*y++ = rb->q.i;
*y++ = rb->q.j;
*y++ = rb->q.k;

A similar change is made in ArrayToState. Also, since ArrayToState is responsible for com-
puting the auxiliary variable I −1 (t), which depends on R(t), ArrayToState must also compute
R(t) as an auxiliary variable: in the section

/* Compute auxiliary variables... */

/* v(t) = P(t)
M */
rb->v = rb->P / mass;

/* I −1 (t) = R(t)Ibody
−1 R(t) T */

rb->Iinv = R * Ibodyinv * Transpose(R);

/* ω(t) = I −1 (t)L(t) */
rb->omega = rb->Iinv * rb->L;
we add the line

rb->R = QuaterionToMatrix(normalize(rb->q));

prior to computing rb->Iinv. The routine normalize returns q divided by its length; this
unit length quaternion returned by normalize is then passed to QuaterionToMatrix which
returns a 3 × 3 rotation matrix. Given a quaternion q = [s, v], QuaterionToMatrix returns the

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G22 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

matrix
 
1 − 2v2y − 2v2z 2v x v y − 2svz 2v x vz + 2sv y
 2v x v y + 2svz 1 − 2v2x − 2v2z 2v y vz − 2sv x  .
2v x vz − 2sv y 2v y vz + 2sv x 1 − 2v2x − 2v2y

In case you need to convert from a rotation matrix to a quaternion,

quaternion matrixToQuaternion(const matrix &m)

{
quaternion q;
double tr, s;

tr = m[0,0] + m[1,1] + m[2,2];

if(tr >= 0)
{
s = sqrt(tr + 1);
q.r = 0.5 * s;
s = 0.5 / s;
q.i = (m[2,1] - m[1,2]) * s;
q.j = (m[0,2] - m[2,0]) * s;
q.k = (m[1,0] - m[0,1]) * s;
}
else
{
int i = 0;

if(m[1,1] > m[0,0])

i = 1;
if(m[2,2] > m[i,i))
i = 2;

switch (i)
{
case 0:
s = sqrt((m[0,0] - (m[1,1] + m[2,2])) + 1);
q.i = 0.5 * s;
s = 0.5 / s;
q.j = (m[0,1] + m[1,0]) * s;
q.k = (m[2,0] + m[0,2]) * s;
q.r = (m[2,1] - m[1,2]) * s;
break;
case 1:
s = sqrt((m[1,1] - (m[2,2] + m[0,0])) + 1);
q.j = 0.5 * s;
s = 0.5 / s;

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G23 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

 q.k = (m[1,2] + m[2,1]) * s;
q.i = (m[0,1] + m[1,0]) * s;
q.r = (m[0,2] - m[2,0]) * s;
break;
case 2:
s = sqrt((m[2,2] - (m[0,0] + m[1,1])) + 1);
q.k = 0.5 * s;
s = 0.5 / s;
q.i = (m[2,0] + m[0,2]) * s;
q.j = (m[1,2] + m[2,1]) * s;
q.r = (m[1,0] - m[0,1]) * s;
}

}
return q;
}

The matrix m is structured so that m[0,0], m[0,1] and m[0,2] form the first row (not column)
of m.
The routines ArrayToBodies and BodiesToArray don’t need any changes at all, but note
that the constant STATE_SIZE changes from 18 to 13, since a quaternion requires five less elements
than a rotation matrix. The only other change we need is in ddtStateToArray. Instead of

matrix Rdot = Star(rb->omega) * rb->R;

/* copy Ṙ(t) into array */

for(int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
for(int j = 0; j < 3; j++)
*xdot++ = Rdot[i,j];

we’ll use

quaternion qdot = .5 * (rb->omega * rb->q);

*xdot++ = qdot.r;
*xdot++ = qdot.i;
*xdot++ = qdot.j;
*xdot++ = qdot.k;

We’re
. assuming here that the multiplication between the triple rb->omega and the quaternion
rb->q is defined to return the quaternion product

[0, rb->omega]q.

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G24 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

  x0 , y0 , z0 
 2 2 2

 − x0 , − y0 , − z0 
 2 2 2 

Figure 7: A rectangular block of constant unit density, with center of mass at (0,0,0).

5 Examples
5.1 Inertia Tensor of a Block
Let us calculate the inertia tensor Ibody of the rectangular block in figure 7. The block has dimensions
x0 × y0 × z0 . As required, the center of mass of the block is at the origin. Thus, the extent of the
block is from − x20 to x20 along the x axis, and similarly for the y and z axes. To calculate the inertia
tensor, we must treat the sums in equation (2–32) as integrals over the volume of the block. Let us
assume that the block has constant unit density. This means that the density function ρ(x, y, z) is
always one. Since the block has volume x0 y0 z0 , the mass M of the block is M = x0 y0 z0 . Then, in

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G25 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

body space,
Z x0 Z y0 Z z0 Z x0 Z y0 Z z0
2 2 2 2 2 2
Ixx = −x0 −y0 −z0
ρ(x, y, z)(y + z ) dx dy dz =
2 2
−x0 −y0 −z0
y2 + z2 dx dy dz
2 2 2 2 2 2
Z x0 Z y0
z=
z0
2 2 z3 2
= −x0 −y0
y2 z + dx dy
2 2
3 z=
−z0
2
Z x0 Z y0
2 2 z30
= −x0 −y0
y2 z0 + dx dy
2 2
12
Z x0 y0 (5–1)
y=
2 y30 z3 2
= −x0
z0 + 0 y0 dx
2
3 12 y=
−y0
2
Z x0
2 y30 z0 z30 y0
= −x0
+ dx
2
12 12
x0
x=
y3 z0 z3 y0 2 y30 z0 x0 z30 y0 x0 x0 y0 z0 2 M
= 0 + 0 + = (y0 + z20 ) = (y20 + z20 ).
12 12 x=
−x0 12 12 12 12
2

Similarly, I yy = 12 (x0 + z20 ) and Izz = 12

M 2 M 2
(x0 + y20 ). Now, the off-diagonal terms, such as Ixy ,
are
Z x0 Z y0 Z z0 Z x0 Z y0 Z z0
2 2 2 2 2 2
Ixy = −x −y −z ρ(x, y, z)(xy) dx dy dz = −x −y −z xy dx dy dz = 0 (5–2)
0 0 0 0 0 0
2 2 2 2 2 2

(and similarly for the others) because the integrals are all symmetric. Thus, the inertia tensor of the
block is
 2 
y + z20 0 0
M 0 .
Ibody = 0 x20 + z20 0 (5–3)
12
0 0 x0 + y0
2 2

5.2 A Uniform Force Field

Suppose a uniform force acts on each particle of a body. For example, we typically describe a
gravitational field as exerting a force mi g on each particle of a rigid body, where g is a vector pointing
downwards. The net force Fg acting due to gravity on the body then is
X
Fg = mi g = Mg (5–4)

which yields an acceleration of Mg g = g of the center of mass, as expected. What is the torque due
to the gravitational field? The net torque is the sum
X X 
(ri (t) − x(t)) × mi g = mi (ri (t) − x(t)) × g = 0 (5–5)

by equation (2–20). We see from this that a uniform gravitational field can have no effect on the
angular momentum of a body. Furthermore, the gravitational field can be treated as a single force
Mg acting on the body at its center of mass.

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 y
z

x(t)
x

(−3,0,−2) (3,0,−2)

F
F

Figure 8: A block acted on by two equal forces F at two different points.

5.3 Rotation Free Movement of a Body

Now, let us consider some forces acting on the block of figure 8. Suppose that an external force
F = (0, 0, f ) acts on the body at points x(t) + (−3, 0, −2) and x(t) + (3, 0, −2). We would expect
that this would cause the body to accelerate linearly, without accelerating angularly. The net force
acting on the body is (0, 0, 2 f ), so the acceleration of the center of mass is
2f
M
along the z axis. The torque due to the force acting at x(t) + (−3, 0, −2) is
   
−3 −3
((x(t) +  0  ) − x(t)) × F =  0  × F
−2 −2
while the torque due to the force acting at x(t) + (3, 0, −2) is
   
3 3
((x(t) +  0  ) − x(t)) × F =  0  × F.
−2 −2
The total torque τ is therefore
         
−3 3 −3 3 0
τ =  0  × F +  0  × F = ( 0  +  0  ) × F =  0  × F.
−2 −2 −2 −2 −2
But this gives
   
0 0
τ =  0  ×  0  = 0.
−2 f

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 y
z

x(t)
x

(−3,0,−2) (3,0,−2)

F
F

Figure 9: A block acted on by two opposite forces F1 and F2 = −F1 , at two different points.

As expected then, the forces acting on the block impart no angular acceleration to the block.

5.4 Translation Free Movement of a Body

Suppose now that an external force F1 = (0, 0, f ) acts on the body at point x(t) + (−3, 0, −2) and an
external force F2 = (0, 0, − f ) acts on the body at point x(t) + (3, 0, 2) (figure 9). Since F1 = −F2 ,
the net force acting on the block is F1 + F2 = 0, so there is no acceleration of the center of mass. On
the other hand, the net torque is

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 F F
(ten seconds later)
v

Energy: Energy:
0 1
Mv T v
2

Figure 10: A rectangular block acted on by a force through its center of mass.

 
−3
((x(t) +  0  ) − x(t)) × F1 +
−2
         
3 −3 0 3 0
((x(t) +  0  ) − x(t)) × F2 =  0  ×  0  + 0  × 0  (5–6)
2 −2 f −2 −f
     
0 0 0
= 3f  + 3f  = 6f .
0 0 0

Thus, the net torque is (0, 6 f, 0), which is parallel to the y axis. The final result is that the forces
acting on the block cause it to angularly accelerate about the y axis.

5.5 Force vs. Torque Puzzle

In considering the effect of a force acting at a point on a body, it sometimes seems that the force is
being considered twice. That is, if a force F acts on a body at a point r + x(t) in space, then we first
consider F as accelerating the center of mass, and then consider F as imparting a spin to the body.
This gives rise to what at first seems a paradox: Consider the long horizontal block of figure 10
which is initially at rest. Suppose that a force F acts on the block at the center of mass for some
period of time, say, ten seconds. Since the force acts at the center of mass, no torque is exerted on
the body. After ten seconds, the body will have acquired some linear velocity v. The body will not
have acquired any angular velocity; thus the kinetic energy of the block will be 12 M|v|2 .
Now suppose that the same force F is applied off-center to the body as shown in figure 11. Since
the force acting on the body is the same, the acceleration of the center of mass is the same. Thus,

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 ω

(ten seconds later)

v

F
F

Energy: Energy:
0 1 1
Mv T v + ω T Iω
2 2

Figure 11: A block acted on by a force, off-center of the center of mass.

after ten seconds, the body will again have linear velocity v. However, after ten seconds, the body
will have picked up some angular velocity ω, since the force F, acting off center, now exerts a torque
on the body. Since the kinetic energy is (see appendix C)
1
2 M|v|
2
+ 12 ω T Iω

the kinetic energy of the block is higher than when the force acted through the center of mass. But
if identical forces pushed the block in both cases, how can the energy of the block be different?
Hint: Energy, or work, is the integral of force over distance.

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 ω

(ten seconds later)

v

F
F

Energy: Energy:
1 1
0 Mv T v + ω T Iω
2 2

Figure 12: The path the force acts over is longer than in figure 10. As a result, the force does more
work, imparting a larger kinetic energy to the block.

Figure 12 shows why the force acting off center results in a higher kinetic energy. The kinetic
energy of the block is equivalent to the work done by the force. The work done by the force is the
integral of the force over the path traveled in applying that force. In figure 11, where the force acts off
the center of mass, consider the path traced out by the point where the force is applied. This path is
clearly longer than the path taken by the center of mass in figure 10. Thus, when the force is applied
off center, more work is done because the point p at which the force is applied traces out a longer
path then when the force is applied at the center of mass.

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 Part II. Nonpenetration Constraints

6 Problems of Nonpenetration Constraints

Now that we know how to write and implement the equations of motion for a rigid body, let’s consider
the problem of preventing bodies from inter-penetrating as they move about an environment. For
simplicity, suppose we simulate dropping a point mass (i.e. a single particle) onto a fixed floor. There
are several issues involved here.
Because we are dealing with rigid bodies, that are totally non-flexible, we don’t want to allow any
inter-penetration at all when the particle strikes the floor. (If we considered our floor to be flexible,
we might allow the particle to inter-penetrate some small distance, and view that as the floor actually
deforming near where the particle impacted. But we don’t consider the floor to be flexible, so we
don’t want any inter-penetration at all.) This means that at the instant that the particle actually comes
into contact with the floor, what we would like is to abruptly change the velocity of the particle. This
is quite different from the approach taken for flexible bodies. For a flexible body, say a rubber ball,
we might consider the collision as occurring gradually. That is, over some fairly small, but non-zero
span of time, a force would act between the ball and the floor and change the ball’s velocity. During
this time span, the ball would deform, due to the force. The more rigid we made the ball, the less the
ball would deform, and the faster this collision would occur. In the limiting case, the ball is infinitely
rigid, and can’t deform at all. Unless the ball’s downward velocity is halted instantaneously, the
ball will inter-penetrate the floor somewhat. In rigid body dynamics then, we consider collisions as
occurring instantaneously.
This means we have two types of contact we need to deal with. When two bodies are in contact
at some point p, and they have a velocity towards each other (as in the particle striking the floor), we
call this colliding contact. Colliding contact requires an instantaneous change in velocity. Whenever
a collision occurs, the state of a body, which describes both position, and velocity, undergoes a
discontinuity in the velocity. The numerical routines that solve ODE’s do so under the assumption
that the state X(t) always varies smoothly. Clearly, requiring X(t) to change discontinuously when
a collision occurs violates that assumption.
We get around this problem as follows. If a collision occurs at time tc , we tell the ODE solver to
stop. We then take the state at this time, X(tc ), and compute how the velocities of bodies involved
in the collision must change. We’ll call the state reflecting these new velocities X(tc )+ . Note that
X(tc ) and X(tc )+ agree for all spatial variables (position and orientation), but will be different for
the velocity variables of bodies involved in the collision at time tc . We then restart the numerical
solver, with the new state X(tc ), and instruct it to simulate forward from time tc .
Whenever bodies are resting on one another at some point p (e.g. imagine the particle in contact
with the floor with zero velocity), we say that the bodies are in resting contact. In this case, we
compute a force that prevents the particle from accelerating downwards; essentially, this force is the
weight of the particle due to gravity (or whatever other external forces push on the particle). We call
the force between the particle and the floor a contact force. Resting contact clearly doesn’t require
us to stop and restart the ODE solve at every instant; from the ODE solver’s point of view, contact
forces are just a part of the force returned by ComputeForceAndTorque.

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 t0

tc

t0 + ∆t

(inter-penetration detected)

Figure 13: At time t0 + 1t, the particle is found to lie below the floor. Thus, the actual time of
collision tc lies between the time of the last known legal position, t0 , and t0 + 1t.

So far then, we have two problems we’ll need to deal with: computing velocity changes for
colliding contact, and computing the contact forces that prevent inter-penetration. But before we can
tackle these problems we have to deal with the geometric issue of actually detecting contact between
bodies. Let’s go back to dropping the particle to the floor. As we run our simulation, we compute
the position of the particle as it drops towards the floor at specific time values (figure 13). Suppose
we consider the particle at times t0 , t0 + 1t, t0 + 21t etc.5 and suppose the time of collision, tc , at
which the particle actually strikes the floor, lies between t0 and t0 + 1t. Then at time t0 , we find that
the particle lies above the floor, but at the next time step, t0 + 1t, we find the particle is beneath the
floor, which means that inter-penetration has occurred.
If we’re going to stop and restart the simulator at time tc , we’ll need to compute tc . All we know
so far is that tc lies between t0 and t0 + 1t. In general, solving for tc exactly is difficult, so we
solve for tc numerically, to within a certain tolerance. A simple way of determining tc is to use a
numerical method called bisection[14]. If at time t0 + 1t we detect inter-penetration, we inform the
ODE solver that we wish to restart back at time t0 , and simulate forward to time t0 + 1t/2. If the
simulator reaches t0 + 1t/2 without encountering inter-penetration, we know the collision time tc
lies between t0 + 1t/2 and t0 + 1t. Otherwise, tc is less than t0 + 1t/2, and we try to simulate from
t0 to t0 + 1t/4. Eventually, the time of collision tc is computed to within some suitable numerical
tolerance. The accuracy with which tc is found depends on the collision detection routines. The
collision detection routines have some parameter . We decide that our computation of tc is “good
enough” when the particle inter-penetrates the floor by no more than , and is less than  above the
floor. At this point we declare that the particle is in contact with the floor (figure 14).
The method of bisection is a little slow, but its easy to implement and quite robust. A faster
method involves actually predicting the time tc of the collision, based on examining X(t0 ) and
X(t0 + 1t). Baraff[1, 2] describes how to make such predictions. How to actually implement all of
5
The ODE solver doesn’t have to proceed with equal size time steps though.

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 t0

tc found (within tolerance)

ε
ε

t0 + ∆t
(inter-penetration detected)

Figure 14: When the particle is found to be within some tolerance  of contacting the floor, then tc
is considered to have been computed to within sufficient accuracy.

this depends on how you interact with your ODE routines. One might use exception handling code
to signal the ODE of various events (collisions, inter-penetration), or pass some sort of messages to
the ODE solver. We’ll just assume that you have some way of getting your ODE solver to progress
just up to the point tc .
Once you actually reach the time of a collision, or whenever you’re in a state X(t) where no
inter-penetration has occurred, a geometric determination has to be made to find all the points of
contact. (Just because you may be looking for the time of collision between two bodies A and B
doesn’t mean you get to neglect resting contact forces between other bodies C and D. Whenever
you’re trying to move the simulation forward, you’ll need to compute the point of contact between
bodies and the contact forces at those points.) There is a vast amount of literature dealing with the
collision detection problem. For instance, some recent SIGGRAPH papers dealing with the subject
are Von Herzen, Barr and Zatz[17] and Moore and Wilhelms[12]; in robotics, a number of papers of
interest are Canny[4], Gilbert and Hong[6], Meyer[11] and Cundall[5]. Preparata and Shamos[13]
describes many approaches in computational geometry to the problem. In the next section, we’ll
briefly describe a collision detection “philosophy” that leads to very efficient algorithms, for the sorts
of simulation these course notes are concerned with. Actual code for the algorithms is fairly easy to
write, but a little too lengthy to fit in these notes. Following this, we’ll move on to consider colliding
and resting contact.

7 Collision Detection
The collision detection algorithm begins with a preprocessing step, in which a bounding box for each
rigid body is computed (a box with sides parallel to the coordinate axes). Given n such bounding
boxes, we will want to quickly determine all pairs of bounding boxes that overlap. Any pair of rigid
bodies whose bounding boxes do not overlap need not be considered any further. Pairs of rigid

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bodies whose bounding boxes do overlap require further consideration. We’ll first describe how
to efficiently check for inter-penetration or contact points between rigid bodies defined as convex
polyhedra. Then we’ll show how to perform the bounding box check efficiently.
As described in section 1, the simulation process consists of the repeated computation of the
derivative of the state vector, dtd X(t), at various times t. The numerical ODE solver is responsible
for choosing the values of t at which the state derivative is to be computed. For any reasonably
complicated simulation, the values of t chosen are such that the state X does not change greatly be-
tween successive values of t. As a result, there is almost always great geometric coherence between
successive time steps. At a time step t0 + 1t, the idea is to take advantage of the collision detection
results computed at the previous time step t0 .

7.1 Convex Polyhedra

Our primary mechanism for exploiting coherence will be through the use of witnesses. In our context,
given two convex polyhedra A and B, a witness is some piece of information that can be used to
quickly answer the “yes/no” question “are A and B disjoint”? We will utilize coherence by caching
witnesses from one time step to the next; hopefully a witness from the previous time step will be a
witness during the current time step.
Since we are considering convex polyhedra, two polyhedra do not inter-penetrate if and only if a
separating plane between them exists. A separating plane between two polyhedra is a plane such that
each polyhedron lies on a different side of the plane. A given plane can be verified to be a separating
plane by testing to make sure that all of the vertices of A and B lie on opposite sides of the plane.
Thus, a separating plane is a witness to the fact that two convex polyhedra do not inter-penetrate. If
a separating plane does not exist, then the polyhedra must be inter-penetrating.
The cost of initially finding a witness (for the very first time step of the simulation, or the first
time two bodies become close enough to require more than a bounding box test) is unavoidable.
A simple way to find a separating plane initially is as follows. If a pair of convex polyhedra are
disjoint or contacting (but not inter-penetrating), then a separating plane exists with the following
property: either the plane contains a face of one of the polyhedra, or the plane contains an edge from
one of the polyhedra and is parallel to an edge of the other polyhedra. (That is, the separating plane’s
normal is the cross product of the two edge directions, and the plane itself contains one of the edges.)
We will call the face or edges in question the defining face or edges. Initially, we simply check all
possible combinations of faces and edges to see if one such combination forms a separating plane
(figure 15). Although this is inefficient, it’s done so infrequently that the inefficiency is unimportant.
For subsequent time steps, all we need to do is form a separating plane from the defining face or edges
found during the previous time step, and then verify the plane to see that it is still valid (figure 16).
On those (rare) occasions when the cached face or two edges fails to form a valid separating plane
(figure 17), faces or edges adjacent to the previously cached face or edges can be examined to see if
they form a separating plane; however, this happens infrequently enough that it may be simpler to
start from scratch and compute a new separating plane without using any prior knowledge.
Once the separating place has been found, the contact region between the two polyhedra is
determined, assuming the polyhedra are not disjoint. Contact points between the two polyhedra can
only occur on the separating plane. Given the separating plane, the contact points can be quickly and
efficiently determined by comparing only those faces, edges, and vertices of the polyhedra that are
coincident with the separating plane.
However, if no separating plane can be found, then the two polyhedra must be inter-penetrating.
When two polyhedra inter-penetrate, it is almost always the case that either a vertex of one poly-

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 separating
plane

Figure 15: Exhaustive search for a separating plane. Only one face of the two polygons forms a
separating plane.

(a) (b)

defining
face

Figure 16: (a) At this time step, the separating plane is defined by a face of one of the polygons. (b) At
the next time step, the polygons have moved, but the same face still defines a separating plane.

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G36 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

 (a) (b)

Figure 17: The face that has been defining a separating plane no longer does so, and a new separating
plane must be found.

hedron is inside the other, or an edge of one polyhedron has intersected a face of the other.6 In
this case, the inter-penetrating vertex, or intersecting edge and face are cached as a witness to the
inter-penetration. Since this indicates a collision at some earlier time, the simulator will back up and
attempt to compute dtd X(t) at some earlier time. Until the collision time is determined, the first action
taken by the collision/contact determination step will be to check the cached vertex or edge and face
to see if they indicate inter-penetration. Thus, until the collision time is found, states in which the
inter-penetration still exists are identified as such with a minimum of computational overhead.

7.2 Bounding Boxes

To reduce the number of pairwise collision/contact determinations necessary, a bounding box hierar-
chy is imposed on the bodies in the simulation environment. If two bounding boxes are found not to
overlap, no further comparisons involving the contents of the boxes are needed. Given a collection
of n rectangular bounding boxes, aligned with the coordinate axes, we would like to efficiently
determine all pairs of boxes that overlap. A naive pairwise comparison of all pairs requires O(n2 )
work and is too inefficient, unless the number of bodies is small. Computational geometry algorithms
exist that can solve this problem in time O(nlogn + k) where k is the number of pairwise overlaps; a
general result is that the problem can be solved in time O(nlogd−2 n + k) for d-dimensional bounding
boxes[13]. Using coherence, we can achieve substantially better performance.
6
An exception is the following. Stack two cubes of equal size atop one another so that their contacting faces exactly
coincide. Lower the top one. This produces an inter-penetration such that no vertex is inside either cube, and no edge
penetrates through any face.

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 (a) (b)

I6 I5
I3 I4
I1 I2

b3 b6 b1 e6 e1 b5 b2 e3 b4 e5 e4 e2

Figure 18: The sweep/sort algorithm. (a) When b1 is encountered, the active list contains intervals
3 and 6; interval 1 is reported to overlap with these two intervals. Interval 1 is added to the active
list and the algorithm continues. (b) When e3 is encountered, the active list contains intervals 2, 3
and 5. Interval 3 is removed from the active list.

7.2.1 The one-dimensional case

Consider the problem of detecting overlap between one-dimensional bounding boxes, aligned with
the coordinate system. Such a bounding box can be described simply as an interval [b, e] where b
and e are real numbers. Let us consider a list of n such intervals, with the ith interval being [bi , ei ].
The problem is then defined to be the determination of all pairs i and j such that the intervals [bi , ei ]
and [b j , e j ] intersect.
The problem can be solved initially by a sort and sweep algorithm. A sorted list of all the bi
and ei values is created, from lowest to highest. The list is then swept, and a list of active intervals,
initially empty, is maintained. Whenever some value bi is encountered, all intervals on the active list
are output as overlapping with interval i, and interval i is then added to the list (figure 18a). Whenever
some value ei is encountered , interval i is removed from the active list (figure 18b). The cost of this
process is O(n log n) to create the sorted list, O(n) to sweep through the list, and O(k) to output each
overlap. This gives a total cost of O(n log n + k), and is an optimal algorithm for initially solving
the problem.
Subsequent comparisons can be improved as follows. First, there is no need to use an O(n log n)
algorithm to form the sorted list of bi and ei values. It is considerably more efficient to start with
the order found for bi and ei values from the previous time step; if coherence is high, this ordering
will be nearly correct for the current time step. A sorting method called an insertion sort[15] is used
to permute the “nearly sorted” list into a sorted list. The insertion sort algorithm works by moving
items towards the beginning of the list, until a smaller item is encountered. Thus, the second item
is interchanged with the first if necessary, then the third item is moved towards the beginning of the
list until its proper place is found, and so on; each movement of an item indicates a change in the
ordering of two values. After the last item on the list has been processed, the list is in order. Such

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 I6 I5
I3 I4
I1 I2

b3 b6 b1 e6 e1 b5 b2 e3 e5 b4 e4 e2

Figure 19: A coherence-based method of detecting overlaps. The order produced in figure 18 is
nearly correct for this arrangement of intervals. Only b4 and e5 need to be exchanged. When the
exchange occurs, the change in overlap status between interval 4 and 5 is detected.

a sort takes time O(n + c) where c is the number of exchanges necessary. For example, the only
difference between figures 19 and 18 is that interval 4 has moved to the right. Starting from the
ordered list of bi and ei values of figure 18, only a single exchange is necessary to sort the list for
figure 19. The insertion sort is not recommendeded as a sorting procedure in general, since it may
require O(n2 ) exchanges; however, it is a good algorithm for sorting a nearly sorted list, which is
what occurs in our highly coherent environment. To complete the algorithm, note that if two intervals
i and j overlap at the previous time step, but not at the current time step, one or more exchanges
involving either a bi or ei value and a b j or e j value must occur. The converse is true as well when
intervals i and j change from not overlapping at the previous time step to overlapping at the current
time step.
Thus, if we maintain a table of overlapping intervals at each time step, the table can be updated
at each time step with a total cost of O(n + c). Assuming coherence, the number of exchanges c
necessary will be close to the actual number k of changes in overlap status, and the extra O(c − k)
work will be negligible. Thus, for the one-dimensional bounding box problem, the coherence view
yields an efficient algorithm of extreme (if not maximal) simplicity that approaches optimality as
coherence increases.

7.2.2 The three-dimensional case

Efficient computational geometry algorithms for solving the bounding box intersection problem in
IR3 are much more complicated than the sort and sweep method for the one-dimensional case. How-
ever, these algorithms all have in common a step that is essentially a sort along a coordinate axis, as in
the one-dimensional case. Each bounding box is described as three independent intervals [bi(x) , ei(x)],
[bi(y) , ei(y) ], and [bi(z) , ei(z)] which represent the intervals spanned on the three coordinate axes by
the ith bounding box. Thus, our first thought towards improving the efficiency of a computational
geometry algorithm for coherent situations would be to sort a list containing the bi(x) and ei(x) values,
and similarly for the y and z axes. Again, such a step will involve O(n + c) work, where c is now the

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G39 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

total number of exchanges involved in sorting all three lists. However, if we observe that checking
two bounding boxes for overlap is a constant time operation, it follows that if we simply check
bounding boxes i and j for overlap whenever an exchange is made between values indexed by i and
j (on any coordinate axis), we will detect all changes in overlap status in O(n + c) time.
Again, we can maintain a table of overlapping bounding boxes, and update it at each time step
in O(n + c) time. The extra work involved is again O(c − k). For the three-dimensional case, extra
work can occur if the extents of two bounding boxes change on one coordinate axis without an actual
change of their overlap status. In practice, the extra work done has been found to be completely
negligible, and the algorithm runs essentially in time O(n + k).

8 Colliding Contact
For the remainder of these notes, we’re going to be concerned with examining the bodies in our
simulator at a particular instant of time t0 . At this time t0 , we assume that no bodies are inter-
penetrating, and that the simulator has already determined which bodies contact, and at which points.
To simplify matters, we’ll imagine that all bodies are polyhedra, and that every contact point between
bodies has been detected. We’ll consider contacts between polyhedra as either vertex/face contacts
or edge/edge contacts. A vertex/face contact occurs when a vertex on one polyhedra is in contact
with a face on another polyhedra. An edge/edge contact occurs when a pair of edges contact; it is
assumed in this case that the two edges are not collinear. (Vertex/vertex and vertex/edge contacts
are degenerate, and are not considered in these notes.) As examples, a cube resting on a plane would
be described as four vertex/face contacts, one contact at each corner of the cube. A cube resting on
a table, but with its bottom face hanging over the edge of the table would still be described as four
contacts; two vertex/face contacts for the vertices on the table, and two edge/edge contacts, one on
each edge of the cube that crosses over an edge of the table.
Each contact is represented by a structure

struct Contact {
RigidBody *a, /* body containing vertex */
*b; /* body containing face */
triple p, /* world-space vertex location */
n, /* outwards pointing normal of face */
ea, /* edge direction for A */
eb; /* edge direction for B */
bool vf; /* true if vertex/face contact */
};

int Ncontacts;
Contact *Contacts;

If the contact is a vertex/face contact, then the variable a points to the rigid body that the contact
vertex is attached to, while b points to the body the face is attached to. We’ll call these two bodies
A and B respectively. For vertex/face contacts, the variable n is set to the outwards pointing unit
normal of the contact face of body B, and the variables ea and eb are unused.
For edge/edge contacts, ea is a triple of unit length, that points in the direction of the contacting
edge of body A (pointed to by a). Similarly, eb is a unit vector giving the direction that the contact

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G40 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

 A

pa ( t) A

pa ( t0 )

pb ( t) pb ( t0 )

B B

Figure 20: (a) The points pa (t) and pb (t) for a vertex/face contact. (b) At time t0 , the bodies come
into contact at pa (t0 ) = pb (t0 ).

edge on body B points. For edge/edge contacts, n denotes a unit vector in the ea × eb direction.
We’ll adopt the convention that the two contacting bodies are labeled A and B such that the normal
direction ea × eb points outwards from B, towards A, as it does for vertex/face contacts.
For both types of contact, the position of the contact in world space (which is either the contact
vertex, or the point where the two edges intersect) is given by p. The collision detection routines
are responsible for discovering all the contact points, setting Ncontacts to the number of contact
points, and allocating space for and initializing an array of Contact structures.
The first thing we’ll need to do is examine the data in each Contact structure to see if colliding
contact is taking place. For a given contact point, the two bodies A and B contact at the point p. Let
pa (t) denote the particular the point on body A that satisfies pa (t0 ) = p. (For vertex/face contacts,
this point will be the vertex itself. For edge/edge contacts, it is some particular point on the contact
edge of A.) Similarly, let pb (t) denote the particular point on body B that coincides with pa (t0 ) = p
at time t0 (figure 20). Although pa (t) and pb (t) are coincident at time t0 , the velocity of the two points
at time t0 may be quite different. We will examine this velocity to see if the bodies are colliding or
not.
From section 2.5, we can calculate the velocity of the vertex point, ṗa (t0 ) by the formula
ṗa (t0 ) = va (t0 ) + ωa (t0 ) × ( pa (t0 ) − xa (t0 )) (8–1)
where va (t) and ωa (t) are the velocities for body A. Similarly, the velocity of the contact point on
the face of B is
ṗb (t0 ) = vb (t0 ) + ωb (t0 ) × ( pb (t0 ) − xb (t0 )). (8–2)
Let’s examine the quantity

vrel = n̂(t0 ) · ( ṗa (t0 ) − ṗb (t0 )), (8–3)

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G41 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

 ˙pa ( t0 ) − p˙ b ( t 0 )
A
n̂

Figure 21: The vector ṗa (t0 ) − ṗb (t0 ) points in the same direction as n̂(t0 ); the bodies are separating.

which is a scalar. In this equation, n̂(t0 ) is the unit surface normal, described by the variable n, for
each contact point. The quantity vrel gives the component of the relative velocity ṗa (t0 ) − ṗb (t0 )
in the n̂(t0 ) direction. Clearly, if vrel is positive, then the relative velocity ṗa (t0 ) − ṗb (t0 ) at the
contact point is in the positive n̂(t0 ) direction. This means that the bodies are moving apart, and that
this contact point will disappear immediately after time t0 (figure 21). We don’t need to worry about
this case. If vrel is zero, then the bodies are neither approaching nor receding at p (figure 22). This
is exactly what we mean by resting contact, and we’ll deal with it in the next section.
In this section, we’re interested in the last possibility, which is vrel < 0. This means that the
relative velocity at p is opposite n̂(t0 ), and we have colliding contact. If the velocities of the bodies
don’t immediately undergo a change, inter-penetration will result (figure 23).
How do we compute the change in velocity? Any force we might imagine acting at p, no matter
how strong, would require at least a small amount of time to completely halt the relative motion
between the bodies. (No matter how strong your car brakes are, you still need to apply them before
you hit the brick wall. If you wait until you’ve contacted the wall, it’s too late...) Since we want
bodies to change their velocity instantly though, we postulate a new quantity J called an impulse.
An impulse is a vector quantity, just like a force, but it has the units of momentum. Applying an
impulse produces an instantaneous change in the velocity of a body. To determine the effects of a
given impulse J, we imagine a large force F that acts for a small time interval 1t. If we let F go to
infinity and 1t go to zero in such a way that

F1t = J (8–4)

then we can derive the effect of J on a body’s velocity by considering how the velocity would change
if we let the force F act on it for 1t time.
For example, if we apply an impulse J to a rigid body with mass M, then the change in linear

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G42 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

 A ˙pa ( t 0 ) − p˙ b ( t0 )
n̂

contact force

Figure 22: The vector ṗa (t0 ) − ṗb (t0 ) is perpendicular to n̂(t0 ); the bodies are in resting contact. A
contact force may be necessary to prevent bodies from accelerating towards each other.

A
n̂

˙pa ( t 0 ) − p˙ b ( t0 )

Figure 23: Colliding contact. The relative velocity ṗa (t0 ) − ṗb (t0 ) is directed inwards, opposite
n̂(t0 ). Unless the relative velocity is abruptly changed, inter-penetration will occur immediately after
time t0 .

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G43 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

velocity 1v is simply
J
1v = . (8–5)
M
Equivalently, the change in linear momentum 1P is simply 1P = J. If the impulse acts at the point
p, then just as a force produces a torque, J produces an impulsive torque of

τimpulse = ( p − x(t)) × J. (8–6)

As one would imagine, the impulsive torque τimpulse also gives rise to a change in angular momentum
1L of 1L = τimpulse. The change in angular velocity is simply I −1 (t0 )τimpulse, assuming the impulse
was applied at time t0 .
When two bodies collide, we will apply an impulse between them to change their velocity. For
frictionless bodies, the direction of the impulse will be in the normal direction, n̂(t0 ). Thus, we can
write the impulse J as

J = jn̂(t0 ) (8–7)

where j is an (as yet) undetermined scalar that gives the magnitude of the impulse. We’ll adopt the
convention that the impulse J acts positively on body A, that is, A is subject to an impulse of + jn̂(t0 ),
while body B is subject to an equal but opposite impulse − jn̂(t0 ) (figure 24). We compute j by using
an empirical law for collisions. Let’s let ṗ− a (t0 ) denote the velocity of the contact vertex of A prior
+
to the impulse being applied, and let ṗa (t0 ) denote the velocity after we apply the impulse J. Let
+
ṗ−
b (t0 ) and ṗb (t0 ) be defined similarly. Using this notation, the initial relative velocity in the normal
direction is

rel = n̂(t0 ) · ( ṗa (t0 ) − ṗb (t0 ));

v− − −
(8–8)

after the application of the impulse,

rel = n̂(t0 ) · ( ṗa (t0 ) − ṗb (t0 )).

v+ + +
(8–9)

The empirical law for frictionless collisions says simply that

v+ −
rel = −vrel . (8–10)

The quantity  is called the coefficient of restitution and must satisfy 0 ≤  ≤ 1. If  = 1, then
v+ −
rel = −vrel , and the collision is perfectly “bouncy”; in particular, no kinetic energy is lost. At the
other end of the spectrum,  = 0 results in v+ rel = 0, and a maximum of kinetic energy is lost. After
this sort of collision, the two bodies will be in resting contact at the contact point p (figure 25).
Calculating the magnitude j of the impulse J = jn̂(t0 ) is fairly simple, although the equations are
a bit tedious to work through. Let’s define the displacements ra and rb as p − xa (t0 ), and p − xb (t0 ).
If we let v− − + +
a (t0 ) and ω a (t0 ) be the pre-impulse velocities of body A, and va (t0 ) and ω a (t0 ) be the
post-impulse velocities, we can write

ṗ+ + +
a (t0 ) = va (t0 ) + ω a (t0 ) × ra (8–11)

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G44 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

 jˆn( t0 )

A
nˆ( t0 )

B − jˆn( t0 )

Figure 24: The impulse between two bodies at a contact point. An impulse of jn̂(t0 ) acts on A, while
an impulse of − jn̂(t0 ) acts on B.

(a) (b) ˙pa+( t0 ) − p˙ b+ ( t0 )

n̂ n̂

p p
˙pa−( t0 ) − p˙ b− ( t0 )

(c)
˙pa+( t0 ) − p˙ b+ ( t0 ) (d)
n̂ n̂ ˙pa+( t 0 ) − p˙ b+ ( t0 )

p p

Figure 25: (a) The relative velocity before application of the impulse. (b) The component of the
relative velocity in the n̂(t0 ) direction is reversed for an  = 1 collision. The relative velocity
perpendicular to n̂(t0 ) remains the same. (c) A collision with 0 <  < 1. The bodies bounce away
in the n̂(t0 ) direction with less speed than they approached. (d) A collision with  = 0. The bodies
do not bounce away from each other, but the relative velocity perpendicular to n̂(t0 ) is unaffected by
the collision.

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G45 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

along with
jn̂(t0 )

v+ −
a (t0 ) = va (t0 ) + and ω+ − −1
a (t0 ) = ω a (t0 ) + Ia (t0 ) ra × jn̂(t0 ) (8–12)
Ma
where Ma is the mass of body A, and Ia (t0 ) is its inertia tensor. Combining the two previous equa-
tions yields
 
+ − jn̂(t0 )


ṗa (t0 ) = va (t0 ) + + ω− −1
a (t0 ) + Ia (t0 ) ra × jn̂(t0 ) × ra
Ma
 
− − jn̂(t0 )


= va (t0 ) + ωa (t0 ) × ra + + Ia−1 (t0 ) ra × jn̂(t0 ) × ra (8–13)
Ma
 
n̂(t0 )

= ṗ−
a + j + Ia−1 (t0 ) ra × n̂(t0 ) × ra .
Ma
It is important to note the form of ṗ+ a (t0 ): it is a simple linear function of j. For body B, an opposite
impulse − jn̂(t0 ) acts, yielding
 
+ − n̂(t0 ) −1


ṗb (t0 ) = ṗb − j + Ib (t0 ) rb × n̂(t0 ) × rb . (8–14)
Mb
This yields


n̂(t0 ) n̂(t0 )
ṗ+
a (t0 ) − ṗ+
b = ṗ+
a (t0 ) − ṗ+
b +j + +
Ma Mb
 (8–15)





Ia−1 (t0 ) ra × n̂(t0 ) × ra + Ib−1 (t0 ) rb × n̂(t0 ) × rb .

rel , we dot this expression with n̂(t0 ). Since n̂(t0 ) is of unit length, n̂(t0 ) · n̂(t0 ) = 1,
To calculate v+
and we obtain

rel = n̂(t0 ) · ( ṗa (t0 ) − ṗb )

v+ + +


1 1
= n̂(t0 ) · ( ṗ− −
a (t0 ) − ṗb ) + j + +
Ma Mb






n̂(t0 ) · Ia−1 (t0 ) ra × n̂(t0 ) × ra + n̂(t0 ) · Ib−1 (t0 ) rb × n̂(t0 ) × rb (8–16)

1 1
= v−
rel + j + +
Ma Mb






n̂(t0 ) · Ia−1 (t0 ) ra × n̂(t0 ) × ra + n̂(t0 ) · Ib (t0 ) rb × n̂(t0 ) × rb .
−1

By expressing v+ −
rel in terms of j and vrel , we can compute j according to equation (8–10). If we
substitute equation (8–16) into equation (8–10), we get

1 1


−
vrel + j + + n̂(t0 ) · Ia−1 (t0 ) ra × n̂(t0 ) × ra +
Ma Mb
 (8–17)



n̂(t0 ) · Ib (t0 ) rb × n̂(t0 ) × rb = −vrel .
−1 −

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G46 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

Finally, solving for j,

−(1 + )v−
j=

rel

. (8–18)
1
Ma + 1
Mb + n̂(t0 ) · Ia−1 (t0 ) ra × n̂(t0 ) × ra + n̂(t0 ) · Ib−1 (t0 ) rb × n̂(t0 ) × rb

Let’s consider some actual code (written for clarity, not speed). First, we determine if two bodies
are in colliding contact.

/*
* Operators: if ‘x’ and ‘y’ are triples,
* assume that ‘x ˆ y’ is their cross product,
* and ‘x * y’ is their dot product.
*/

/* Return the velocity of a point on a rigid body */

triple pt_velocity(Body *body, triple p)
{
return body->v + (body->omega ˆ (p - body->x));
}

/*
* Return true if bodies are in colliding contact. The
* parameter ‘THRESHOLD’ is a small numerical tolerance
* used for deciding if bodies are colliding.
*/
bool colliding(Contact *c)
{
triple padot = pt_velocity(c->a, p), /* ṗ−
a (t0 ) */
pbdot = pt_velocity(c->b, p); −
/* ṗb (t0 ) */
double vrel = c->n * (padot - pbdot); /* v− rel */

if(vrel > THRESHOLD) /* moving away */

return false;
if(vrel > -THRESHOLD) /* resting contact */
return false;
else /* vrel < -THRESHOLD */
return true;
}

Next, we’ll loop through all the contact points until all the collisions are resolved, and actually
compute and apply an impulse.

void collision(Contact *c, double epsilon)

{
triple padot = pt_velocity(c->a, c->p), /* ṗ−a (t0 ) */
pbdot = pt_velocity(c->b, c->p), /* ṗ−
b (t0 ) */
n = c->n, /* n̂(t0 ) */

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G47 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

 ra = p - c->a->x, /* ra */
rb = p - c->b->x; /* rb */
double vrel = n * (padot - pbdot), /* v−
rel */
numerator = -(1 + epsilon) * vrel;

/* We’ll calculate the denominator in four parts */

double term1 = 1 / c->a->mass,
term2 = 1 / c->b->mass,
term3 = n * ((c->a->Iinv * (ra ˆ n)) ˆ ra),
term4 = n * ((c->b->Iinv * (rb ˆ n)) ˆ rb);

/* Compute the impulse magnitude */

double j = numerator / (term1 + term2 + term3 + term4);

triple force = j * n;

/* Apply the impulse to the bodies */

c->a->P += force;
c->b->P -= force;
c->a->L += ra ˆ force;
c->b->L -= rb ˆ force;

/* recompute auxiliary variables */

c->a->v = c->a->P / c->a->mass;
c->b->v = c->b->P / c->b->mass;

c->a->omega = c->a->Iinv * c->a->L;

c->b->omega = c->b->Iinv * c->b->L;
}

void FindAllCollisions(Contact contacts[], int ncontacts)

{
bool had_collision;
double epsilon = .5;

do {
had_collision = false;

for(int i = 0; i < ncontacts; i++)

if(colliding(&contacts[i]))
{
collision(&contacts[i], epsilon);
had_collision = true;

/* Tell the solver we had a collision */

ode_discontinuous();

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G48 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

 }

} while(had_collision == true);
}

Note several things. First,  = .5 was chosen arbitrarily. In a real implementation, we’d allow the
user to use different values of  depending on which two bodies were colliding. Also, every time we
find a collision, we have to rescan the list of contacts, since bodies that were at rest may no longer be
so, and new collisions may develop. If there are initially several collisions to be resolved (such as a
cube dropped flat onto a plane, with all four vertices colliding at once), the order of the contact list
may have an effect on the simulation. There is a way to compute impulses at more than one contact
point at a time, but it more complicated, and is based on the concepts used for resting contact in the
next section. For further information, see Baraff[1].
Incidentally, if you want to have certain bodies that are “fixed”, and cannot be moved (such as
1
floors, or walls), you can use the following trick: for such bodies, let mass be zero; also let the
inverse inertia tensor also be the 3 × 3 zero matrix. You can either special-case the code to check if
a body is supposed to be fixed, or you can recode the definition of RigidBody to have the variable
invmass instead of mass. For ordinary bodies, invmass is the inverse of the mass, while for
fixed bodies, invmass is zero. The same goes for the inertia tensor. (Note that nowhere in any of
the dynamics computations (including the next section) is the mass or inertia tensor ever used; only
their inverses are used, so you won’t have to worry about dividing by zero.) The same trick can be
used in the next section on resting contact to simulate bodies that can support any amount of weight
without moving.

9 Resting Contact
The case of resting contact, when bodies are neither colliding nor separating at a contact point, is the
last (and hardest) dynamics problem we’ll tackle in these notes. To implement what’s in this section,
you’ll have to obtain a fairly sophisticated piece of numerical software, which we’ll describe below.
At this point, let’s assume we have a configuration with n contact points. At each contact point,
bodies are in resting contact, that is, the relative velocity vrel , from section 8, is zero (to within the
numerical tolerance THRESHOLD). We can say that this is so, because colliding contact is eliminated
by the routine FindAllCollisions(), and any contact points with vrel larger than THRESHOLD
can be safely ignored, since the bodies are separating there.
As was the case for colliding contact, at each contact point, we have a contact force that acts
normal to the contact surface. For the case of colliding contact, we had an impulse jn̂(t0 ) where j
was an unknown scalar. For resting contact, at each contact point there is some force f i n̂i (t0 ), where
f i is an unknown scalar, and n̂i (t0 ) is the normal at the ith contact point (figure 26). Our goal is to
determine what each f i is. In computing the f i ’s, they must all be determined at the same time, since
the force at the ith contact point may influence one or both of the bodies of the j contact point. In
section 8, we wrote how the velocity of the contact points pa (t0 ) and pb (t0 ) changed with respect to
j. We’ll do the same thing here, but now we’ll have to describe how the acceleration of pa (t0 ) and
pb (t0 ) depends on each f i .
For colliding contact, we had an empirical law which related the impulse strength j to the relative
velocity and a coefficient of restitution. For resting contact, we compute the f i ’s subject to not one,
but three conditions. First, the contact forces must prevent inter-penetration; that is, the contact

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G49 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

 A

nˆ 3 ( t0 )
p4

B
p3
nˆ 1 (t 0 ) nˆ 2 ( t 0 ) nˆ 4 ( t 0 ) nˆ5 ( t0 ) C

D
p1 p2 p5

Figure 26: Resting contact. This configuration has five contact points; a contact force acts between
pairs of bodies at each contact point.

forces must be strong enough to prevent two bodies in contact from being pushed “towards” one
another. Second, we want our contact forces to be repulsive; contact forces can push bodies apart, but
can never act like “glue” and hold bodies together. Last, we require that the force at a contact point
become zero if the bodies begin to separate. For example, if a block is resting on a table, some force
may act at each of the contact points to prevent the block from accelerating downwards in response
to the pull of gravity. However, if a very strong wind were to blow the brick upwards, the contact
forces on the brick would have to become zero at the instant that the wind accelerated the brick off
the table.
Let’s deal with the first condition: preventing inter-penetration. For each contact point i, we
construct an expression di (t) which describes the separation distance between the two bodies near the
contact point at time t. Positive distance indicates the bodies have broken contact, and have separated
at the ith contact point, while negative distance indicates inter-penetration. Since the bodies are in
contact at the present time t0 , we will have di (t0 ) = 0 (within numerical tolerances) for each contact
point. Our goal is to make sure that the contact forces maintain di (t) ≥ 0 for each contact point at
future times t > t0 .
For vertex/face contacts, we can immediately construct a very simple function for di (t). If pa (t)
and pb (t) are the contact points of the ith contact, between bodies A and B, than the distance between
the vertex and the face at future times t ≥ t0 is given by

di (t) = n̂i (t) · ( pa (t) − pb (t)). (9–1)

At time t, the function d(t) measures the separation between A and B near pa (t). If di (t) is zero,
then the bodies are in contact at the ith contact point. If di (t) > 0, then the bodies have lost contact
at the ith contact point. However, if di (t) < 0, then the bodies have inter-penetrated, which is what
we need to avoid (figure 27). The same function can also be used for edge/edge contacts; since n̂i (t)

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G50 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

 (a) (b) (c)

A
pa ( t) A
A
nˆ( t)
nˆ( t) pa ( t) nˆ( t) pb ( t)
pb ( t) pb ( t)
pa ( t)

B B B

Figure 27: (a) The displacement pa (t) − pb (t), indicated by an arrow, points in the same direction
as n̂(t). Thus, the distance function d(t) would be positive. (b) The distance function d(t) is zero.
(c) The displacement pa (t) − pb (t) points in the opposite direction as n̂(t). The distance function
d(t) is negative, indicating inter-penetration.

points outwards from B towards A (by convention), n̂i (t) · ( pa (t) − pb (t)) will be positive if the
two contacting edges move so as to separate the bodies.
Since di (t0 ) = 0, we have to keep di (t0 ) from decreasing at time t0 ; that is, we have to have
di (t0 ) ≥ 0. What is d˙i (t0 )? Differentiating,
˙

d˙i (t) = n̂˙ i (t) · ( pa (t) − pb (t)) + n̂i (t) · ( ṗa (t) − ṗb (t)). (9–2)

Since di (t) describes the separation distance, d˙i (t) will describe the separation velocity at time t.
However, at time t0 , pa (t0 ) = pb (t0 ), which means that d˙i (t0 ) = n̂i (t0 ) · ( ṗa (t0 ) − ṗb (t0 )). This
should look familiar: its vrel from the previous section! The function d˙i (t0 ) is a measure of how
the bodies are separating, and for resting contact, we know that d(t ˙ 0 ) is zero, because the bodies are
neither moving towards nor away from each other at a contact point.
At this point then, we have di (t0 ) = d˙i (t0 ) = 0. Now we’ll look at d¨i (t0 ). If we differentiate
equation (9–2), we get
 
d¨i (t) = n̂¨ i (t) · ( pa (t) − pb (t)) + n̂˙ i (t) · ( ṗa (t) − ṗb (t)) +
 
n̂˙ i (t) · ( ṗa (t) − ṗb (t)) + n̂i (t) · ( p̈a (t) − p̈b (t)) (9–3)

= n̂¨ i (t) · ( pa (t) − pb (t)) + 2n̂˙ i (t) · ( ṗa (t) − ṗb (t)) + n̂i (t) · ( p̈a (t) − p̈b (t)).

Since pa (t0 ) = pb (t0 ), we can write d¨i (t0 ) as

¨ 0 ) = n̂i (t0 ) · ( p̈a (t0 ) − p̈b (t0 )) + 2n̂˙ i (t0 ) · ( ṗa (t0 ) − ṗb (t0 )).
d(t (9–4)

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G51 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

The quantity d¨i (t0 ) measures how the two bodies are accelerating towards each other at the contact
point p. If d¨i (t0 ) > 0, the the bodies have an acceleration away from each other, and contact will
break immediately after t0 . If d¨i (t0 ) = 0, then contact remains. The case d¨i (t0 ) < 0 must be avoided,
for this indicates the bodies are accelerating towards each other. Note that if n̂i (t0 ) is a constant (if
body B is fixed), then n̂˙ i (t0 ) is zero, leading to further simplifications.
Thus, we satisfy our first condition for contact forces by writing the constraint

d¨i (t0 ) ≥ 0 (9–5)

for each contact point. Since the acceleration d¨i (t0 ) depends on the contact forces, this is really a
constraint on the contact forces.
Let’s turn our attention to the second and third constraints. Since contact forces must always
be repulsive, each contact force must act outward. This means that each f i must be positive, since
a force of f i n̂i (t0 ) acts on body A, and n̂i (t0 ) is the outwards pointing normal of B. Thus, we
need

fi ≥ 0 (9–6)

for each contact point. The third constraint is expressed simply in terms of f i and d¨i (t0 ). Since the
contact force f i n̂i (t0 ) must become zero if contact is breaking at the ith contact, this says that f i must
be zero if contact is breaking. We can express this constraint by writing

f i d¨i (t0 ) = 0; (9–7)

if contact is breaking, d¨i (t0 ) > 0 and equation (9–7) is satisfied by requiring f i = 0. If contact is not
breaking, then d¨i (t0 ) = 0, and equation (9–7) is satisfied regardless of f i .
In order to actually find f i ’s which satisfy equations (9–5), (9–6), and (9–7), we need to express
each d¨i (t0 ) as a function of the unknown f i ’s. It will turn out that we will be able to write each d¨i (t0 )
in the form

d¨i (t0 ) = ai1 f1 + ai2 f2 + · · · + ain f n + bi . (9–8)

In matrix parlance, this means we will be able to write

     
d¨1 (t0 ) f1 bi
 ..   .   .. 
 .  = A  ..  +  .  (9–9)
d¨n (t0 ) fn bn

where A is the n × n matrix of the aij coefficients of equation (9–8). Although the code needed to
calculate the aij ’s and the bi ’s is not too complicated, working out the derivations on which the code
is based is somewhat tedious. The derivations are worked out in appendix D, along with code to
compute the matrix of aij ’s and bi ’s.
Appendix D gives an implementation of the routines

void compute_a_matrix(Contact contacts[], int ncontacts,

bigmatrix &a);

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G52 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

 void compute_b_vector(Contact contacts[], int ncontacts,
vector &b);

where the types bigmatrix and vector represent matrices and vectors of arbitrary size. The first
routine computes the aij ’s, while the second routine computes the bi ’s.
Once we’ve computed all this, we can think about solving equations (9–5), (9–6), and (9–7).
This system of equations forms what is called a quadratic program (QP); that is, f i ’s that satisfy these
three equations are found by an algorithm called quadratic programming. Not all quadratic programs
can be solved efficiently, but because our contact forces are all normal to the contact surfaces (that is,
they do not involve friction), it turns out that our QP can always be solved efficiently. One interesting
thing to note is that QP codes can easily handle the case d¨i (t0 ) = 0 instead of d¨i (t0 ) ≥ 0. We use
d¨i (t0 ) = 0 (and also drop the constraint f i ≥ 0) if we wish to constrain two bodies to never separate
at a contact point. This enables us to implement hinges, and pin-joints, as well as non-penetration
constraints during simulation.
Quadratic programming codes aren’t terribly common though; certainly, they are not nearly as
common as linear equation codes, and are much harder to implement. The quadratic programming
routines used by the author were obtained from the Department of Operations Research at Stanford
University. See Gill et al.[7, 8, 9] for further details. More recently, we have been using code
described by Baraff[3] to solve the quadratic programs. If you are determined to really implement
this, we suggest a thorough study of this paper (excepting for the section on contact with friction).
At any rate, let’s assume that you’ve got a working QP solver at your disposal. We’ll assume
that you pass the matrix A, and the vector of bi ’s to the QP solver, and you get back the vector of
f i ’s. Let’s pretend the interface is

void qp_solve(bigmatrix &a, vector &b, vector &f);

Let’s see how to compute all the resting contact forces. The following routine is presumably called
from ComputeForceAndTorque(), after FindAllCollisions() has been called.

void ComputeContactForces(Contact contacts[], int ncontacts, double t)

{
/* We assume that every element of contacts[]
* represents a contact in resting contact.
*
* Also, we’ll assume that for each element of Bodies[],
* the ‘force’ and ‘torque’ fields have been set to the
* net external force and torque acting on the body, due
* to gravity, wind, etc., perhaps by a call to
*
* ComputeExternalForceAndTorqueForAllBodies(t);
*/

/*
* Allocate n × n matrix ‘amat’ and n-vectors ‘fvec’, and ‘bvec’.
*/

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G53 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

 bigmatrix amat = new bigmatrix(ncontacts, ncontacts);
vector bvec = new vector(ncontacts),
fvec = new vector(ncontacts);

/* Compute aij and bi coefficients */

compute_a_matrix(contacts, ncontacts, amat);

compute_b_vector(contacts, ncontacts, bvec);

/* Solve for f j ’s */
qp_solve(amat, bmat, fvec);

/* Now add the resting contact forces we just computed into

the ‘force’ and ‘torque’ field of each rigid body. */

for(int i = 0; i < ncontacts; i++)

{
double f = fvec[i]; /* f i */
triple n = contacts[i]->n; /* n̂i (t0 ) */
RigidBody *A = contacts[i]->a, /* body A */
*B = contacts[i]->b; /* body B */

/* apply the force ‘f n’ positively to A... */

A->force += f * n;
A->torque += (contacts[i].p - A->x) * (f*n);

/* and negatively to B */

B->force -= f * n;
B->torque -= (contacts[i].p - B->x) * (f*n);
}
}

That’s pretty much it! Now that the resting forces have been computed and combined with the
external forces, we return control to the ODE solver, and each body goes merrily along its way, in a
physically correct manner, without inter-penetration.

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G54 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

Appendix A Motion Equation Derivations
In this appendix, we’ll fill in some of the missing details from section 2, with regards to the equa-
tions Ṗ(t) = F(t), L̇(t) = τ(t), and L(t) = I(t)ω(t). The derivation method used here is some-
what nonstandard, and was proposed by Andy Witkin. The derivation in this appendix is (we
feel) much shorter and considerably more elegant than the one found in traditional sources such as
Goldstein[10].
We’ve described the external force acting on a rigid body in terms of forces Fi (t), where Fi (t)
is the external force acting on the ith particle. However, for a rigid body to maintain its shape,
there must be some “internal” constraint forces that act between particles in the same body. We will
make the assumption that these constraint forces act passively on the system and do not perform any
net work. Let Fci (t) denote the net internal constraint force acting on the ith particle. The work
performed by Fci on the ith particle from time t0 to t1 is
Z t1
Fci (t) · ṙ i (t) dt
t0

where ṙ i (t) is the velocity of the ith particle. The net work over all the particles is the sum
X Z t1 Z t1 X
Fci (t) · ṙ i (t) dt = Fci (t) · ṙ i (t) dt,
i t0 t0 i

which must be zero for any interval t0 to t1 . This means that the integrand
X
Fci (t) · ṙ i (t) (A–1)
i
P
is itself always zero for any time t. (Henceforth we’ll just write these expressions as Fci · ṙ i = 0.)
We can use this fact to eliminate any mention of the constraint forces Fci from our derivations.
First, some quick notes about the “∗” operator defined in section 2.3: since a∗ b = a × b, and
a × b = −b × a, we get

−a∗ b = b × a = b∗ a. (A–2)

Since a∗ is an antisymmetric matrix,

(a∗ ) T = −a∗ . (A–3)

Finally, since the “∗” operator is a linear operator,

d
(ȧ)∗ = (a˙∗ ) = (a∗ ) (A–4)
dt
and for a set of vectors ai
X X ∗
a∗i = ai . (A–5)

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G55 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

 Recall that we can write the velocity ṙ i as ṙ i = v + ω × (ri − x) where ri is the particle’s location,
x is the position of the center of mass, and v and ω are linear and angular velocity. Letting ri0 = ri − x
and using the “∗” notation,
∗
ṙ i = v + ω∗ri0 = v − ri0 ω. (A–6)
P
Substituting this into Fci · ṙ i , which is always zero, yields
X
Fci · (v − ri0 ω) = 0.
∗
(A–7)

Note that this equation must hold for arbitraryP values of v and ω. Since v and ω are completely
independent, if we choose P ω to be zero, then Fci · v = 0 for any choice of v, from which we
conclude that in fact Fci = 0 is always true. This means
P that the constraint forces produce no
net force. Similarly, choosing v to be zero we see that −Fci · (ri0 ∗ ω) = 0 for any ω. Rewriting
Fci · (ri0 ∗ ω) as Fci T (ri0 ∗ ω) we get that
X X 
∗ ∗
−Fci T ri0 ω = −Fci T ri0 ω = 0 (A–8)
P
for any ω, so −Fci T ri0 ∗ = 0T . Transposing, we have
X ∗
X X
−(ri0 ) T Fci = (ri0 )∗ Fci = ri0 × Fci = 0 (A–9)

which means that the internal forces produce no net torque.

We can use the above to derive the rigid body equations of motion. The net force on each particle
is the sum of the internal constraint force Fci and the external force Fi . The acceleration r̈i of the ith
particle is
d d ∗ ∗ ∗
r̈i = ṙ i = (v − ri0 ω) = v̇ − ṙ0i ω − ri0 ω̇. (A–10)
dt dt
Since each individual particle must obey Newton’s law f = ma, or equivalently ma − f = 0, we
have
∗ ∗
mi r̈i − Fi − Fci = mi (v̇ − ṙ0i ω − ri0 ω̇) − Fi − Fci = 0 (A–11)

for each particle. P

To derive Ṗ = F = Fi , we sum equation (A–11) over all the particles. We obtain
X ∗ ∗
mi (v̇ − ṙ 0i ω − ri0 ω̇) − Fi − Fci = 0. (A–12)

Breaking the large sum into smaller ones,

X ∗ ∗
mi (v̇ − ṙ0i ω − ri0 ω̇) − Fi − Fci =
X X ∗
X ∗
X X
mi v̇ − miṙ0i ω − miri0 ω̇ − Fi − Fci =
X X ∗ X ∗ X X (A–13)
mi v̇ − miṙ0i ω − miri0 ω̇ − Fi − Fci =
X    
d X ∗ X ∗ X X
mi v̇ − miri0 ω − miri0 ω̇ − Fi − Fci = 0.
dt

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G56 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

Since
P we are in a center-of-mass coordinate system, equation (2–20) from
P section 2.6 tells us
Pthat
0 d P 0 0
miri = 0, which also means that dt mi ri = 0. Removing terms with miri , and the term Fci
from the above equation yields
X X
mi v̇ − Fi = 0 (A–14)
P
or simply M v̇ = Ṗ = PFi as advertised.
To obtain L̇ = τ = ri0 × Fi , we again start with equation (A–11). Multiplying both sides by
0 ∗
ri yields

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗
ri0 mi (v̇ − ṙ 0i ω − ri0 ω̇) − ri0 Fi − ri0 Fci = ri0 0 = 0. (A–15)

Summing over all the particles, we obtain

X ∗
X ∗ ∗
X ∗ ∗
X ∗
X ∗
ri0 mi v̇ − ri0 miṙ 0i ω − ri0 miri0 ω̇ − ri0 Fi − ri0 Fci = 0. (A–16)
P
Since ri0 ∗ Fci = 0, we can rearrange this to obtain
X ∗ X  X  X ∗
mi ri0 v̇ − mi ri0 ∗ ṙ0i ∗ ω − miri0 ∗ri0 ∗ ω̇ − ri0 Fi = 0. (A–17)
P
Using mi ri0 = 0, we are left with
X  X  X
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗
− miri0 ṙ 0i ω− mi ri0 ri0 ω̇ − ri0 Fi − = 0 (A–18)
P P
or, recognizing that ri0 ∗ Fi = ri0 × Fi = τ,
X  X 
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗
− miri0 ṙ 0i ω− miri0 ri0 ω̇ = τ. (A–19)

We’re almost done now: if we refer back to the matrix defined by the “∗” notation, one can easily
verify the relation that the matrix −a∗ a∗ is equivalent to the matrix (a T a)1 − aa T where 1 is the
3 × 3 identity matrix. (This relation is equivalent to the vector rule a × (b × c) = ba T c − ca T b.)
Thus
X ∗ ∗
X
−mi ri0 ri0 = mi ((ri0 ri0 )1 − ri0 ri0 ) = I(t).
T T
(A–20)

Substituting into equation (A–19), this yields

X 
∗ ∗
−miri0 ṙ0i ω + I(t)ω̇ = τ. (A–21)

The above expression is almost acceptable,Pas it gives an expression for ω̇ in terms of τ, ex-
cept that it requires us to evaluate the matrix miri0 ∗ṙ ∗i , which is as expensive as computing the
inertia tensor from scratch. We’ll use one last trick here to clean things up. Since ṙi0 = ω × ri0 and
ri0 ∗ ω = −ω × ri0 , we can write
X ∗ ∗
X X
mi ṙ0i ri0 ω = mi (ω × ri0 )∗ (−ω × ri0 ) = −mi (ω × ri0 ) × (ω × ri0 ) = 0. (A–22)

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G57 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

 P
Thus, we can add − miṙ 0i ∗ri0 ∗ ω = 0 to equation (A–21) to obtain
X 
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗
−miri0 ṙ0i − mi ṙ0i ri0 ω + I(t)ω̇ = τ. (A–23)

Finally, since

d X ∗ ∗
X ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗
İ(t) = −miri0 ri0 = −miri0 ṙ0i − miṙ 0i ri0 (A–24)
dt
we have
d
İ(t)ω + I(t)ω̇ = (I(t)ω) = τ. (A–25)
dt
Since L(t) = I(t)ω(t), this leaves us with the final result that

L̇(t) = τ. (A–26)

Appendix B Quaternion Derivations

A formula for q̇(t) is derived as follows. Recall that the angular velocity ω(t) indicates that the body
is instantaneously rotating about the ω(t) axis with magnitude |ω(t)|. Suppose that a body were to
rotate with a constant angular velocity ω(t). Then the rotation of the body after a period of time 1t
is represented by the quaternion

|ω(t)|1t |ω(t)|1t ω(t)

[cos , sin ].
2 2 |ω(t)|
Let us compute q̇(t) at some particular instant of time t0 . At times t0 + 1t (for small 1t), the
orientation of the body is (to within first order) the result of first rotating by q(t0 ) and then further
rotating with velocity ω(t0 ) for 1t time. Combining the two rotations, we get

|ω(t0 )|1t |ω(t0 )|1t ω(t0 )

q(t0 + 1t) = [cos , sin ] q(t0 ). (B–1)
2 2 |ω(t0 )|
Making the substitution t = t0 + 1t, we can express this as

|ω(t0 )|(t − t0 ) |ω(t0 )|(t − t0 ) ω(t0 )

q(t) = [cos , sin ]q(t0 ). (B–2)
2 2 |ω(t0 )|
Let us differentiate q(t) at time t0 . First, since q(t0 ) is a constant, let us differentiate

|ω(t0 )|(t − t0 ) |ω(t0 )|(t − t0 ) ω(t0 )

[cos , sin ].
2 2 |ω(t0 )|
At time t = t0 ,
d |ω(t0 )|(t − t0 ) |ω(t0 )| |ω(t0 )|(t − t0 )
cos =− sin
dt 2 2 2 (B–3)
|ω(t0 )|
=− sin 0 = 0.
2

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G58 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

Similarly,

d |ω(t0 )|(t − t0 ) |ω(t0 )| |ω(t0 )|(t − t0 )

sin = cos
dt 2 2 2 (B–4)
|ω(t0 )| |ω(t0 )|
= cos 0 = .
2 2
Thus, at time t = t0 ,
 
d |ω(t0 )|(t − t0 ) |ω(t0 )|(t − t0 ) ω(t0 )
q̇(t) = [cos , sin ] q(t0 )
dt 2 2 |ω(t0 )|
 
d |ω(t0 )|(t − t0 ) |ω(t0 )|(t − t0 ) ω(t0 )
= [cos , sin ] q(t0 )
dt 2 2 |ω(t0 )| (B–5)
|ω(t0 )| ω(t0 )
= [0, ] q(t0 )
2 |ω(t0 )|
= [0, 12 ω(t0 )] q(t0 ) = 12 [0, ω(t0 )] q(t0 ).

The product [0, ω(t0 )] q(t0 ) is abbreviated to the form ω(t0 )q(t0 ); thus, the general expression for
q̇(t) is

q̇(t) = 12 ω(t)q(t). (B–6)

Appendix C Some Miscellaneous Formulas

C.1 Kinetic Energy
The kinetic energy T of a rigid body is defined as
X
T= 2 m i ṙ i ṙ i .
1 T
(C–1)

Letting ri0 = ri − x, we have ṙ i = v(t) + ri0 ∗ ω. Thus

X
T= 1 T
2 m i ṙ i ṙ i
X
0∗ 0∗
= 2 m i (v + ri ω) (v + ri ω)
1 T

X X X (C–2)
∗ ∗ ∗
= 1
2 mi v v + T
v T
miri0 ω + 12 mi (ri0 ω) T (ri0 ω)
X  X ∗ X 
∗ T ∗
= 12 v T mi v + v T miri0 ω + 12 ω T mi (ri0 ) ri0 ω.
P
mi ri0 = 0 and (ri0 ∗ ) = −ri0 ∗ , we have
T
Using
X 
∗ ∗
T = 12 v T Mv + 12 ω T −miri0 ri0 ω = 12 (v T Mv + ω T Iω) (C–3)
P
since I = −miri0 ∗ ri0 ∗ from appendix A. Thus, the kinetic energy can be decomposed into two
terms: a linear term 12 v T Mv, and an angular term 12 ω T Iω.

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G59 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

C.2 Angular Acceleration
It is often necessary to compute ω̇(t). Since L(t) = I(t)ω(t), we know ω(t) = I −1 (t)L(t). Thus,

ω̇(t) = İ −1 (t)L(t) + I −1 (t) L̇(t). (C–4)

Since we know that L̇(t) = τ(t), let us consider İ −1 (t). From equation (2–40),

I −1 (t) = R(t)Ibody
−1
R(t) T ,

so

İ −1 (t) = Ṙ(t)Ibody
−1 −1
R(t) T + R(t)Ibody Ṙ(t) T . (C–5)

Since Ṙ(t) = ω(t)∗ R(t),

Ṙ(t) T = (ω(t)∗ R(t)) T = R(t) T (ω(t)∗ ) T . (C–6)

Since ω(t)∗ is antisymmetric, (i.e. (ω(t)∗ ) T = −ω(t)∗),

Ṙ(t) T = −R(t) T ω(t)∗ . (C–7)

This yields

İ −1 (t) = Ṙ(t)Ibody
−1 −1
R(t) T + R(t)Ibody (−R(t) T ω(t)∗ )

= ω(t)∗ R(t)Ibody
−1
R(t) T − I −1 (t)ω(t)∗ (C–8)

= ω(t)∗ I −1 (t) − I −1 (t)ω(t)∗ .

Then

ω̇(t) = İ −1 (t)L(t) + I −1 (t) L̇(t)

= ω(t)∗ I −1 (t) − I −1 (t)ω(t)∗ L(t) + I −1 (t) L̇(t) (C–9)

= ω(t)∗ I −1 (t)L(t) − I −1 (t)ω(t)∗ L(t) + I −1 (t) L̇(t).

But since I −1 (t)L(t) = ω(t), the first term, ω(t)∗ I −1 (t)L(t) is equivalent to ω(t)∗ ω(t), or ω(t) × ω(t),
which is zero. This leaves the final result of

ω̇(t) = −I −1 (t)ω(t)∗ L(t) + I −1 (t) L̇(t)

= −I −1 (t)ω(t) × L(t) + I −1 (t) L̇(t)

(C–10)
−1 −1
=I (t)(L(t) × ω(t)) + I (t) L̇(t)

= I −1 (t)(L(t) × ω(t) + L̇(t)).

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G60 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

We can see from this that even if no forces act, so that L̇(t) is zero, ω̇(t) can still be non-zero. (In fact,
this will happen whenever the angular momentum and angular velocities point in different directions,
which in turn occurs when the body has a rotational velocity axis that is not an axis of symmetry for
the body.)

C.3 Acceleration of a Point

Given a point of a rigid body with world space coordinate p(t), it is often necessary to compute p̈(t).
Let the body space coordinate that transforms at time t to p(t) be p0 ; then

p(t) = R(t) p0 + x(t)

If we let r(t) = p(t) − x(t), then

ṗ(t) = Ṙ(t) p0 + ẋ(t) = ω(t)∗ R(t) p0 + v(t)

= ω(t) × (R(t) p0 + x(t) − x(t)) + v(t)

(C–11)
= ω(t) × ( p(t) − x(t)) + v(t)

= ω(t) × r(t) + v(t).

Then

p̈(t) = ω̇(t) × r(t) + ω(t) × ṙ(t) + v̇(t)

(C–12)
= ω̇(t) × r(t) + ω(t) × (ω(t) × r(t)) + v̇(t).

We can interpret this as follows. The first term, ω̇(t) × r(t) is the tangential acceleration of the point;
that is, ω̇(t) × r(t) is the acceleration perpendicular to the displacement r(t) as a result of the body
being angularly accelerated. The second term, ω(t) × (ω(t) × r(t)) is the centripetal acceleration of
the point; this centripetal acceleration arises because the body is rigid, and points on the body must
rotate in a circular orbit about the center of mass. The last term, v̇(t) is the linear acceleration of the
point due to the linear acceleration of the center of mass of the body.

Appendix D Resting Contact Derivations

If you’re determined to implement resting contact in your simulator, you’ll need the derivations and
the code in this appendix. This is probably not a fun appendix to work through; then again, this
wasn’t a fun appendix to write! The derivations in here are somewhat terse, but the code at the end
of the appendix will hopefully make things clearer.

D.1 Derivations
We need to express d¨i (t0 ) in terms of all the unknown f i ’s. It will turn out that we’ll be able to write
each d¨i (t0 ) in the form

d¨i (t0 ) = ai1 f1 + ai2 f2 + · · · + ain f n + bi . (D–1)

S IGGRAPH 2001 C OURSE N OTES G61 P HYSICALLY B ASED M ODELING

Given i and j, we need to know how d¨i (t0 ) depends on f j , that is, we need to know aij . Also, we
need to compute the constant term bi .
Let’s start by determining aij and ignoring the constant part bi . We’ll assume the ith contact
involves two bodies A and B. From equation (9–4), we can write d¨i (t0 ) as

¨ 0 ) = n̂i (t0 ) · ( p̈a (t0 ) − p̈b (t0 )) + 2n̂˙ i (t0 ) · ( ṗa (t0 ) − ṗb (t0 ))
d(t (D–2)

where pa (t0 ) = pi = pb (t0 ) is the contact point for the ith contact at time t0 . The right-most
term 2n̂˙ i (t0 ) · ( ṗa (t0 ) − ṗb (t0 )) is a velocity dependent term (i.e. you can immediately calculate
it without knowing the forces involved), and is part of bi , so we’ll ignore this for now.
So we only need to know how p̈a (t0 ) and p̈b (t0 ) depend on f j , the magnitude of the jth contact
force. Consider the jth contact. If body A is not one of the bodies involved in the jth contact, then
p̈a (t0 ) is independent of f j , because the jth contact force does not act on body A. Similarly, if B is
also not one of the two bodies involved in the jth contact, then p̈b (t0 ) is also independent of f j . (For
example, in figure 26, the acceleration of the contact points at the first contact is completely unaf-
fected by the contact force acting at the fifth contact. Thus, d¨1 (t0 ) would be completely independent
of f5 . Conversely, d¨5 (t0 ) is completely independent of f1 .)
Suppose though that in the jth contact, body A is involved. For definiteness, suppose that in the
jth contact, a force of jn̂ j (t0 ) acts on body A, as opposed to − jn̂ j (t0 ). Let’s derive how p̈a (t0 ) is
affected by the force jn̂ j (t0 ) acting on A.
From equation (C–12), we can write

p̈a (t) = v̇a (t) + ω̇a (t) × ra (t) + ωa (t) × (ωa (t) × ra (t)) (D–3)

where ra (t) = pa (t) − xa (t), and xa (t), va (t), and ωa (t) are all the variables associated with body
A. We know that v̇a (t) is the linear acceleration of body A, and is equal to the total force acting on
A divided by the mass. Thus, a force of jn̂ j (t0 ) contributes

f j n̂ j (t0 ) n̂ j (t0 )
= fj (D–4)
ma ma
to v̇a (t) and thus p̈a (t). Similarly, consider ω̇a (t), from equation (C–10):

ω̇a (t) = Ia−1 (t)τa (t) + Ia−1 (t)(La (t) × ωa (t))

where τa (t) is the total torque acting on body A. If the jth contact occurs at the point p j , then the
force jn̂ j (t0 ) exerts a torque of

( p j − xa (t0 )) × f j n̂ j (t0 ).

Thus, the angular contribution to p̈a (t0 ) is

f j Ia−1 (t0 ) ( p j − xa (t0 )) × n̂ j (t0 ) × ra . (D–5)

The total dependence of p̈a (t0 ) on f j is therefore

 
n̂ j (t0 )


fj + Ia−1 (t0 ) ( p j − xa (t0 )) × n̂ j (t0 ) × ra .
ma

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Now, if a force of − f j n̂(t0 ) had acted on A instead, we’d get the same dependence, but with a minus
sign in front of f j . Clearly, p̈b (t0 ) depends on f j in the same sort of manner. Once we compute
how p̈a (t0 ) and p̈b (t0 ) depend on f j , we combine the results together and take the dot product with
n̂i (t0 ), to see how d¨i (t0 ) depends on f j . This gives us aij . Confused? See the code below.
We still need to compute bi . We know that d¨i (t0 ) contains the constant term

2n̂˙ i (t0 ) · ( ṗa (t0 ) − ṗb (t0 )).

But we also have to take into account the contributions to p̈a (t0 ) and p̈b (t0 ) due to known ex-
ternal forces such as gravity, as well as the force-independent terms ωa (t0 ) × (ωa (t0 ) × ra ) and
(Ia−1 (t0 )(Ła (t0 ) × ωa (t0 ))) × ra . If we let the net external force acting on A be Fa (t0 ), and the net
external torque be τa (t0 ), then from equations (D–4) and (D–5), we get that Fa (t0 ) contributes

Fa (t0 )
ma
and that τa (t0 ) contributes


Ia−1 (t0 )τa (t0 ) × ra .

Thus, the part of p̈a (t0 ) that is independent from all the f j ’s is

Fa (t0 )


+ Ia−1 (t0 )τa (t0 ) × ra + ωa (t0 ) × (ωa (t0 ) × ra ) + Ia−1 (t0 )(Ła (t0 ) × ωa (t0 )) × ra
ma

and similarly for p̈b (t0 ). To compute bi , we combine the constant parts of p̈a (t0 ), p̈b (t0 ), dot with
n̂i (t0 ), and add the term 2n̂˙ i (t0 ) · ( ṗa (t0 ) − ṗb (t0 )).

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D.2 Code
Here’s the code to implement the above derivations. Let’s start by computing the constant bi terms.

/* return the derivative of the normal vector */

triple computeNdot(Contact *c)
{
if(c->vf) /* vertex/face contact */
{
/* The vector ‘n’ is attached to B, so... */
return c->b->omega ˆ c->n;
}
else
{
/* This is a little trickier. The unit normal ‘n’ is
× eb
n̂ = kea
ea × ebk .
Differentiating n̂ with respect to time is left
as an exercise... but here’s some code */

triple eadot = c->a->omega ˆ ea, /* ėa */

ebdot = c->b->omega ˆ eb; /* ėb */
n1 = ea * eb,
z = eadot * eb + ea * ebdot;
double l = length(n1);

n1 = n1 / length; /* normalize */

return (z - ((z * n) * n)) / l;

}
}

void compute_b_vector(Contact contacts[], int ncontacts, vector &b)

{
for(int i = 0; i < ncontacts; i++)
{
Contact *c = &contacts[i];
Body *A = c->a,
*B = c->b;
triple n = c->n, /* n̂i (t0 ) */
ra = c->p - A->x, /* p − xa (t0 ) */
rb = c->p - B->x; /* p − xb (t0 ) */

/* Get the external forces and torques */

triple f_ext_a = A->force,
f_ext_b = B->force,
t_ext_a = A->torque,

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 t_ext_b = B->torque;

triple a_ext_part, a_vel_part,

b_ext_part, b_vel_part;

/* Operators: ‘ˆ’ is for cross product, ‘*’, is for

dot products (between two triples), or matrix-vector
multiplication (between a matrix and a triple). */

/* Compute the part of p̈a (t0 ) due to the external

force and torque, and similarly for p̈b (t0 ). */

a_ext_part = f_ext_a / A->mass + ((A->Iinv * t_ext_a) ˆ ra),

b_ext_part = f_ext_b / B->mass + ((B->Iinv * t_ext_b) ˆ rb);

/* Compute the part of p̈a (t0 ) due to velocity,

and similarly for p̈b (t0 ). */

a_vel_part = (A->omega ˆ (A->omega ˆ ra)) +

((A->Iinv * (A->L ˆ A->omega)) ˆ ra);

b_vel_part = (B->omega ˆ (B->omega ˆ rb)) +

((B->Iinv * (B->L ˆ B->omega)) ˆ rb);

/* Combine the above results, and dot with n̂i (t0 ) */

double k1 = n * ((a_ext_part + a_vel_part) -
(b_ext_part + b_vel_part));
triple ndot = computeNdot(c);

/* See section 8 for ‘pt_velocity’ definition */

double k2 = 2 * ndot * (pt_velocity(A, c->p) -
pt_velocity(B, c->p));

b[i] = k1 + k2;
}
}

Computing the aij terms is a little more tricky, because we have to keep track of how the jth
contact force affects the ith contact point. The following routine is not the most efficient way to do
things, because with a good data structure, you can tell in advance which of the aij ’s are going to
be zero. Still unless you’re working with really huge numbers of contacts, not too much extra work
will be done.

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 void compute_a_matrix(Contact contacts[], int ncontacts, bigmatrix &a)
{
for(int i = 0; i < ncontacts; i++)
for(int j = 0; j < ncontacts; j++)
a[i,j] = compute_aij(contacts[i], contacts[j]);
}

double compute_aij(Contact ci, Contact cj)

{
/* If the bodies involved in the ith and jth contact are
distinct, then aij is zero. */

if((ci.a != cj.a) && (ci.b != cj.b) &&

(ci.a != cj.b) && (ci.b != cj.a))
return 0.0;

Body *A = ci.a,
*B = ci.b;
triple ni = ci.n, /* n̂i (t0 ) */
nj = cj.n, /* n̂ j (t0 ) */
pi = ci.p, /* ith contact point location */
pj = cj.p, /* jth contact point location */
ra = pi - A->x,
rb = pi - B->x;

/* What force and torque does contact j exert on body A? */

triple force_on_a = 0,
torque_on_a = 0;

if(cj.a == ci.a)
{
/* force direction of jth contact force on A */
force_on_a = nj;

/* torque direction */
torque_on_a = (pj - A->x) ˆ nj;
}
else if(cj.b == ci.a)
{
force_on_a = - nj;
torque_on_a = (pj - A->x) ˆ nj;
}

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 /* What force and torque does contact j exert on body B? */
triple force_on_b = 0,
torque_on_b = 0;

if(cj.a == ci.b)
{
/* force direction of jth contact force on B */
force_on_b = nj;

/* torque direction */
torque_on_b = (pj - B->x) ˆ nj;
}
else if(cj.b == ci.b)
{
force_on_b = - nj;
torque_on_b = (pj - B->x) ˆ nj;
}

/* Now compute how the jth contact force affects the linear
and angular acceleration of the contact point on body A */

triple a_linear = force_on_a / A->mass,

a_angular = (A->Iinv * torque_on_a) ˆ ra;

/* Same for B */

triple b_linear = force_on_b / B->mass,

b_angular = (B->Iinv * torque_on_b) ˆ rb;

return ni * ((a_linear + a_angular) - (b_linear + b_angular));

}

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References
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