How to calculate collision normal between two AxisAlignedBox's?

Question

I'm writing a physics simulation in Ogre3D and I'm trying to figure out how to calculate the collision normal between two Ogre::AxisAlignedBox's.

I am checking for collisions using the "intersects" function then calculating the collision normals as below, but I am almost certain that this is where I am going wrong as my collisions are very unpredictable:

Ogre::AxisAlignedBox intersection = boxA.intersection(boxB);
Vector firstCollisionNorm = boxA.getCenter() - intersection.getCenter();
Vector secondCollisionNorm = boxB.getCenter() - intersection.getCenter();

After this, I am normalizing the collision normals, calculating the impulse magnitude using dot product, mass and relative velocity, then I multiply the collision normals by the magnitude to get the final impulse force vector, which is added to my current force vector as "impulseForce / deltaTime" for the next step of euler intergration.

If anyone could help me out I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks

Answer 1

The collision normal should be one of the faces of your boxes. Since you obviously allow some interpenetration you need to pick the closest face:

size = intersection.getSize();

float ax = fabs(size.x);
float ay = fabs(size.y);
float az = fabs(size.z);

float sx = boxA.getCenter().x < boxB.getCenter().x ? -1.0f : 1.0f;
float sy = boxA.getCenter().y < boxB.getCenter().y ? -1.0f : 1.0f;
float sz = boxA.getCenter().z < boxB.getCenter().z ? -1.0f : 1.0f;

if (ax <= ay && ax <= az)
    firstCollisionNorm = Vector(sx, 0.0f, 0.0f);
else if (ay <= az)
    firstCollisionNorm = Vector(0.0f, sy, 0.0f);
else
    firstCollisionNorm = Vector(0.0f, 0.0f, sz);

Then set secondCollisionNorm = -firstCollisionNorm.