What's the most efficient way to detect triangle-triangle intersections?

Question

How can I tell whether two triangles intersect in 2D Euclidean space? (i.e. classic 2D geometry) given the (X,Y) coordinates of each vertex in each triangle.

Answer 1

Sort the vertices of both triangle by decreasing ordinate. That takes at most three comparisons per triangle. Then merge the two sequences. I guess that this takes at most five comparisons.

Now for every ordinate, consider an horizontal line. It intersects both triangles in at most one line segment, and it is an easy matter to check it the segments do overlap. If they do, or if they change order between two lines, then the triangles intersect.

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Update:

There is an affine transformation that can normalize one of the triangles to (0, 0)-(1, 0)-(0, 1). Apply it to the other and many computations will simplify.

Answer 2

One way is to check if two sides of triangle A intersect with any side of triangle B, and then check all six possibilities of a point of A inside B or a point of B inside A.

For a point inside a triangle see for example: Point in triangle test.

When we test collisions on polygons we also have a surrounding rectangle for our polygons. So we first test for rectangle collisions and if there is a hit we proceed with polygon collision detection.

Answer 3

Python implementation for line intersection and point in triangle test, with a little modification.

def line_intersect2(v1,v2,v3,v4):
    '''
    judge if line (v1,v2) intersects with line(v3,v4)
    '''
    d = (v4[1]-v3[1])*(v2[0]-v1[0])-(v4[0]-v3[0])*(v2[1]-v1[1])
    u = (v4[0]-v3[0])*(v1[1]-v3[1])-(v4[1]-v3[1])*(v1[0]-v3[0])
    v = (v2[0]-v1[0])*(v1[1]-v3[1])-(v2[1]-v1[1])*(v1[0]-v3[0])
    if d<0:
        u,v,d= -u,-v,-d
    return (0<=u<=d) and (0<=v<=d)

def point_in_triangle2(A,B,C,P):
    v0 = [C[0]-A[0], C[1]-A[1]]
    v1 = [B[0]-A[0], B[1]-A[1]]
    v2 = [P[0]-A[0], P[1]-A[1]]
    cross = lambda u,v: u[0]*v[1]-u[1]*v[0]
    u = cross(v2,v0)
    v = cross(v1,v2)
    d = cross(v1,v0)
    if d<0:
        u,v,d = -u,-v,-d
    return u>=0 and v>=0 and (u+v) <= d

def tri_intersect2(t1, t2):
    '''
    judge if two triangles in a plane intersect 
    '''
    if line_intersect2(t1[0],t1[1],t2[0],t2[1]): return True
    if line_intersect2(t1[0],t1[1],t2[0],t2[2]): return True
    if line_intersect2(t1[0],t1[1],t2[1],t2[2]): return True
    if line_intersect2(t1[0],t1[2],t2[0],t2[1]): return True
    if line_intersect2(t1[0],t1[2],t2[0],t2[2]): return True
    if line_intersect2(t1[0],t1[2],t2[1],t2[2]): return True
    if line_intersect2(t1[1],t1[2],t2[0],t2[1]): return True
    if line_intersect2(t1[1],t1[2],t2[0],t2[2]): return True
    if line_intersect2(t1[1],t1[2],t2[1],t2[2]): return True
    inTri = True 
    inTri = inTri and point_in_triangle2(t1[0],t1[1],t1[2], t2[0])
    inTri = inTri and point_in_triangle2(t1[0],t1[1],t1[2], t2[1])
    inTri = inTri and point_in_triangle2(t1[0],t1[1],t1[2], t2[2])
    if inTri == True: return True
    inTri = True
    inTri = inTri and point_in_triangle2(t2[0],t2[1],t2[2], t1[0])
    inTri = inTri and point_in_triangle2(t2[0],t2[1],t2[2], t1[1])
    inTri = inTri and point_in_triangle2(t2[0],t2[1],t2[2], t1[2])
    if inTri == True: return True
    return False