Box2D Get Bounding Box of a Body

Question

In Box2D, I was curious if it's possible to get a bounding box of a body already created in the world.

So basically, the Body is created, it's interacting with the world and such. And I needed that Body's bounding box. Is it possible?

Answer 1

In Box2D, bodies don't have bounding boxes associated with them, fixture do. So you need to iterate over all the fixtures and generate a new AABB. Something like this:

b2AABB aabb;
aabb.lowerBound = b2Vec2(FLT_MAX,FLT_MAX);
aabb.upperBound = b2Vec2(-FLT_MAX,-FLT_MAX); 
b2Fixture* fixture = body->GetFixtureList();
while (fixture != NULL)
{
    aabb.Combine(aabb, fixture->GetAABB());
    fixture = fixture->GetNext();
}

Answer 2

just using the fixture aabb also includes the shape radius - if you want to get the real aabb without the radius of the shape, do it like this:

b2AABB aabb;
b2Transform t;
t.SetIdentity();
aabb.lowerBound = b2Vec2(FLT_MAX,FLT_MAX);
aabb.upperBound = b2Vec2(-FLT_MAX,-FLT_MAX); 
b2Fixture* fixture = body->GetFixtureList();
while (fixture != nullptr) {
     const b2Shape *shape = fixture->GetShape();
     const int childCount = shape->GetChildCount();
     for (int child = 0; child < childCount; ++child) {
            const b2Vec2 r(shape->m_radius, shape->m_radius);
            b2AABB shapeAABB;
            shape->ComputeAABB(&shapeAABB, t, child);
            shapeAABB.lowerBound = shapeAABB.lowerBound + r;
            shapeAABB.upperBound = shapeAABB.upperBound - r;
            aabb.Combine(shapeAABB);
    }
    fixture = fixture->GetNext();
}

Answer 3

Really, a for loop is usually better for iteration. Taking @noel 's answer:

b2AABB aabb;
aabb.lowerBound = b2Vec2(FLT_MAX,FLT_MAX);
aabb.upperBound = b2Vec2(-FLT_MAX,-FLT_MAX); 
for (b2Fixture* fixture = body->GetFixtureList(); fixture; fixture = fixture->GetNext())
{
    aabb.Combine(aabb, fixture->GetAABB());
}

The expression fixture, taken as boolean, is, I understand, equivalent to fixture != NULL.

Answer 4

This is what I generally use:

Rect aabb = someNode->getBoundingBox();
DrawNode* drawNode = DrawNode::create();
drawNode->drawRect(aabb.origin, aabb.origin + aabb.size, Color4F(1, 0, 0, 1));
this->addChild(drawNode, 100);

Where this is some parent node. I've even added this to the node itself (e.g. someNode) and that also seems to work, just make sure your z-index is high enough.