Determining if a point is inside a polyhedron

Question

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      continue;
    }

    float t = N/D;

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

  return true;
}

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

Answer 1

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

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

as

N = - dot product of S and ni;

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

Answer 2

The link in your question has expired and I could not understand the algorithm from your code. Assuming you have a convex polyhedron with counterclockwise oriented faces (seen from outside), it should be sufficient to check that your point is behind all faces. To do that, you can take the vector from the point to each face and check the sign of the scalar product with the face's normal. If it is positive, the point is behind the face; if it is zero, the point is on the face; if it is negative, the point is in front of the face.

Here is some complete C++11 code, that works with 3-point faces or plain more-point faces (only the first 3 points are considered). You can easily change bound to exclude the boundaries.

#include <vector>
#include <cassert>
#include <iostream>
#include <cmath>

struct Vector {
  double x, y, z;

  Vector operator-(Vector p) const {
    return Vector{x - p.x, y - p.y, z - p.z};
  }

  Vector cross(Vector p) const {
    return Vector{
      y * p.z - p.y * z,
      z * p.x - p.z * x,
      x * p.y - p.x * y
    };
  }

  double dot(Vector p) const {
    return x * p.x + y * p.y + z * p.z;
  }

  double norm() const {
    return std::sqrt(x*x + y*y + z*z);
  }
};

using Point = Vector;

struct Face {
  std::vector<Point> v;

  Vector normal() const {
    assert(v.size() > 2);
    Vector dir1 = v[1] - v[0];
    Vector dir2 = v[2] - v[0];
    Vector n  = dir1.cross(dir2);
    double d = n.norm();
    return Vector{n.x / d, n.y / d, n.z / d};
  }
};

bool isInConvexPoly(Point const& p, std::vector<Face> const& fs) {
  for (Face const& f : fs) {
    Vector p2f = f.v[0] - p;         // f.v[0] is an arbitrary point on f
    double d = p2f.dot(f.normal());
    d /= p2f.norm();                 // for numeric stability

    constexpr double bound = -1e-15; // use 1e15 to exclude boundaries
    if (d < bound)
      return false;
  }

  return true;
}

int main(int argc, char* argv[]) {
  assert(argc == 3+1);
  char* end;
  Point p;
  p.x = std::strtod(argv[1], &end);
  p.y = std::strtod(argv[2], &end);
  p.z = std::strtod(argv[3], &end);

  std::vector<Face> cube{ // faces with 4 points, last point is ignored
    Face{{Point{0,0,0}, Point{1,0,0}, Point{1,0,1}, Point{0,0,1}}}, // front
    Face{{Point{0,1,0}, Point{0,1,1}, Point{1,1,1}, Point{1,1,0}}}, // back
    Face{{Point{0,0,0}, Point{0,0,1}, Point{0,1,1}, Point{0,1,0}}}, // left
    Face{{Point{1,0,0}, Point{1,1,0}, Point{1,1,1}, Point{1,0,1}}}, // right
    Face{{Point{0,0,1}, Point{1,0,1}, Point{1,1,1}, Point{0,1,1}}}, // top
    Face{{Point{0,0,0}, Point{0,1,0}, Point{1,1,0}, Point{1,0,0}}}, // bottom
  };

  std::cout << (isInConvexPoly(p, cube) ? "inside" : "outside") << std::endl;

  return 0;
}

Compile it with your favorite compiler

clang++ -Wall -std=c++11 code.cpp -o inpoly

and test it like

$ ./inpoly 0.5 0.5 0.5
inside
$ ./inpoly 1 1 1
inside
$ ./inpoly 2 2 2
outside