Determining the intersection of a triangle and a plane

Question

I have a single triangle and a plane (in 3 dimensional space), How would I calculate the line segment where the two cross, if there is no crossing then I need to detect this case.

The end result I'm looking for is two 3 dimensional vectors, which define the start and end points of the line segment.

To help you out a little, I have already calculated the intersection ray between the plane of the face, and the plane, I simply need to find the endpoints to clip that ray into a line segment.

For those who like reading things in code:

Face face;        //a face, defined by 3 points
Plane plane;      //a plane, defined by a normal vector and a distance
Ray intersection; //a ray, defined by a point and a direction, initialised to the intersection of the face plane and the face

Segment s = CalculateSegment(face, plane, intersection); //this method needs defining

Answer 1

Here's some suggested pseudo code. Simple version first, more robust version later (just to help separate the principle from the neuances). Simple version:

// Assume the plane is given as the equation dot(N,X) + d = 0, where N is a (not
// neccessarily normalized) plane normal, and d is a scalar. Any way the plane is given -
// DistFromPlane should just let the input vector into the plane equation.

vector3d planeN;
float planeD;

float DistFromPlane( vector3d P)
{
// if N is not normalized this is *not* really the distance, 
// but the computations work just the same.
    return dot(planeN,P) + planeD;
}

bool GetSegmentPlaneIntersection( vector3d P1, vector3d P2, vector3d& outP)
{
  float d1 = DistFromPlane(P1),
        d2 = DistFromPlane(P2);

  if (d1*d2 > 0)  // points on the same side of plane
     return false;

  float t = d1 / (d1 - d2); // 'time' of intersection point on the segment
  outP = P1 + t * (P2 - P1);

  return true;
}

void TrianglePlaneIntersection(vector3d triA, vector3d triB, vector3d triC,
                               vector3dArray& outSegTips)
{
   vector3d IntersectionPoint;
   if( GetSegmentPlaneIntersection( triA, triB, IntersectionPoint))
     outSegTips.Add(IntersectionPoint);

   if( GetSegmentPlaneIntersection( triB, triC, IntersectionPoint))
     outSegTips.Add(IntersectionPoint);

   if( GetSegmentPlaneIntersection( triC, triA, IntersectionPoint))
     outSegTips.Add(IntersectionPoint);
}

Now adding some robustness:
[Edit: Added explicit consideration for the case of a single vertex on the plane]

vector3d planeN;
 float planeD;

float DistFromPlane( vector3d P)
{
    return dot(planeN,P) + planeD;
}

void GetSegmentPlaneIntersection( vector3d P1, vector3d P2, vector3dArray& outSegTips)
{
  float d1 = DistFromPlane(P1),
        d2 = DistFromPlane(P2);

  bool  bP1OnPlane = (abs(d1) < eps),
        bP2OnPlane = (abs(d2) < eps);

  if (bP1OnPlane)
     outSegTips.Add(P1);

  if (bP2OnPlane)
     outSegTips.Add(P2);

  if (bP1OnPlane && bP2OnPlane)
     return;

  if (d1*d2 > eps)  // points on the same side of plane
     return;

  float t = d1 / (d1 - d2); // 'time' of intersection point on the segment
  outSegTips.Add( P1 + t * (P2 - P1) );
}

void TrianglePlaneIntersection(vector3d triA, vector3d triB, vector3d triC,
                               vector3dArray& outSegTips)
{
   GetSegmentPlaneIntersection( triA, triB, outSegTips));
   GetSegmentPlaneIntersection( triB, triC, outSegTips));
   GetSegmentPlaneIntersection( triC, triA, outSegTips));

   RemoveDuplicates(outSegTips);  // not listed here - obvious functionality 
}

Hopefully that gives an idea, but there are still quite a few potential optimizations. If, for example, you're calculating these intersections for every triangle in a large mesh, you might calculate and cache the DistanceFromPlane once per vertex, and just retrieve it for every edge the vertex participates in. There can be more advanced caching too, depending on your scenario and data representation.