Summary

One objective of this chapter has been to make it clearer how detecting linear collisions in 3-D can be approached. A continuing theme has been that your grounding in 2-D collision detection gives you an excellent start on 3-D collision detection. If you have found this to be so, you can feel pleased with yourself. It means that you understood the techniques already covered. If not, don’t be discouraged. Circle back to earlier chapters and see what you’ve missed. You’ve looked now at a large number of different shapes and seen how you can make some calculations to detect collisions between them. You’ve also examined more general techniques that will work on any mesh. There is still plenty of work to do in order to fill in the gaps. The next chapter provides a high-speed tour of 3-D. Among its topics are how surfaces are given shape by light.