THREE.js - Moving objects to rest on an object face - javascript

I have a curved map of the US that I'm attempting to drop pins on. Right now, I'm just doing some math to find out how far they are from the highest part of the curve and map their height accordingly. Since this map has some states higher or lower than others, this doesn't quite work out. Some pins are floating in space, others are buried in the ground.
What I'd like to be able to do is start them all at a certain height and move them down until they collide with the map face, but I can't find any reliable documentation or SO answers about how to do collision detection in THREE.js.
Is there a better strategy? How can I get these pins to rest their points on this curved map?

I followed #TheJim01's advice and used a Raycaster at each marker's location, pointed it downwards and used the distance property of the first intersection to adjust the marker's Y position.
A few gotchas that I got a bit hung up on: It took me a while to realize I needed to use the marker's world position rather than it's local position since they are all children of the map object. Also, I had moved the map's position and rotation before creating the Raycaster so "downward" was no longer down. So I just set the markers before moving the map around.
const raycaster = new THREE.Raycaster();
markers.forEach(marker => {
raycaster.set(marker.getWorldPosition(), new THREE.Vector3(0, -1, 0).normalize());
let intersects = raycaster.intersectObjects([map]);
if(intersects.length) {
marker.position.y -= intersects[0].distance;
}
});

Related

three.js: finding nearest point of a Mesh to mouse cursor

Imagine this three.js scene, set up with an OrthographicCamera and OrbitControls:
When the user drags the yellow disc (meant to represent the Sun), the disc needs to move along its yellow circle in response to this action. Here's the scene from another angle, so you can see the full yellow circle:
So, my event handler must determine which point on this circle is closest to the current cursor position. This yellow circle is a THREE.Mesh, by the way.
I'm using THREE.Raycaster to determine some mouseover events, using its intersectObjects() function, but it's not clear to me how to find the nearest point of a single object with this Raycaster. I'm guessing there is some simple math I can do after translating the mouse's position to world co-ordinates. Can someone help me with this? Is Three.js's Raycaster useful here? If not, how do I determine the nearest point of this mesh?
The full source code is here, if it's helpful: https://github.com/ccnmtl/astro-interactives/blob/master/sun-motion-simulator/src/HorizonView.jsx Search for this.sunDeclination, which corresponds to the yellow circle's Mesh object.
For a working demo, go here: https://ccnmtl.github.io/astro-interactives/sun-motion-simulator/
For reference, the sun should behave like this: https://cse.unl.edu/~astrodev/flashdev2/sunMotions/sunMotions068.html (requires Flash)
The simplest version:
get a point on disk
make a projection in the plane of the circle
knowing the radius of the circle, calculate the multiplier for multiplying the vector by the scalar
var point = res.point.clone();
point.z = 0; // Project on circle plane
var scale = circleRadius / point.length();
point.multiplyScalar(circleRadius / point.length())
[ https://jsfiddle.net/c4m3o7ht/ ]
The raycaster returns all objects hit by the ray.. all of the hit points in worldspace.. (which you can convert to/from model space via object3d.worldToLocal and localToWorld)
It returns the hit distances.. which you can sort by whatever heuristic you need...
What I usually do is cast on mouseDown.. record the object and point.. then on mouseMove get the same objects hit point, and apply my edit operation using the difference between those 2 points.
Is this what you're talking about?

Maximum latitude map panning with leaflet

I am new to leaflet and I want the restrict the panning of a world map horizontally and not vertically (longitude but not latitude) because this map will display pictures when I click on them and I cant see well the image when i restrict the panning horizontally AND vertically. The map by itself it not a picture, it's a real world map. But when I click on certain location, a small picture will appear on the map.
I try to play with maxBounds and setMaxbounds. The normal maxBounds (to view the world map) is :
maxBounds: [[-85, -180.0],[85, 180.0]],
When i try to put the latitude to
[[-150, -180.0],[150, 180.0]]
, the vertical panning is still restricted. Can somebody help please? Thank you.
This sounds similar to a (quite obscure) issue in the Leaflet issue tracker a
while back: see https://github.com/Leaflet/Leaflet/issues/3081
However, that issue was dealing with infinite horizontal bounds, not vertical bounds in a CRS that already has some preset limits.
If you set the map's maxBounds to a value larger than 85 (the value for MAX_LATITUDE of L.Projection.Spherical) and run a debugger, the call stack goes through the map's _panInsideMapBounds(), then panInsideBounds(), then _limitCenter(), then _getBoundsOffset, then project(), then through the map CRS's latLngToPoint, then untimately L.Projection.Spherical's project(). L.Projection.Spherical.project() projects the bounds' limits into pixel coordinates, and clamps the projected point to be inside the projection's limits.
There are a lot of reasons behind this, one of them being to prevent users from putting markers outside the area covered with tiles:
(This is particularly important when a user confuses lat-lng with lng-lat and tries to use a value outside the [-90,90] range for latitude, and the projection code starts returning Infinity values everywhere)
How to get around this? Well, we can always specify the map's CRS, and we can create a CRS with a hacked projection which enforces a different limit. Please be aware that this changes how the pixelOrigin works internally (as explained in the Leaflet tutorial about extending layers), so stuff (particularly plugins) might break.
So something like:
var hackedSphericalMercator = L.Util.extend(L.Projection.SphericalMercator, {
MAX_LATITUDE: 89.999
});
var hackedEPSG3857 = L.Util.extend(L.CRS.EPSG3857, {
projection: hackedSphericalMercator
});
var map = new L.Map('mapcontainer', {
crs: hackedEPSG3857,
});
Of course, then you can set up your own maxBounds:
var map = new L.Map('mapcontainer', {
crs: hackedEPSG3857,
maxBounds: [[-Infinity, -10], [Infinity, 10]]
});
In this case, the bounds' limits would still be clamped to hackedSphericalMercator.MAX_LATITUDE, but you should have enough wiggle room for your application.
As a side note: A radically different approach to this problem would be to use a different map projection. We're used to a spherical cylindrical projection, but that's not the only way to flatten the earth.
In particular, a Transverse Mercator projection (or pretty much any other transverse cylindrical projection, for that matter) works pretty much in the same way, but wraps vertically instead of horizontally, and it's the projected longitudes, not latitudes, the ones which approach infinity asymptotically when approaching the [-180, 180] range. Let me borrow an image from its wikipedia article:
This implies a different set of challenges (namely finding some raster tiles appropriate for your application, including which prime meridian to use, and making proj4leaflet play nice), but it's definitely doable.

Getting intersection between existing layer and drawn shape

EDIT I now get the right layer from map, so the question now sums up to knowing if a layer A which contains curves, intersectects layer B which contains a surface which can be a circle or a polygon that was just drawn. I tried turf library's turf.intersect but I get "cyclic object reference" from that library.
And I am already looping through the curves seperaterly, to the question is now "Does a curve intersect with a shape.
Also tried: ol.extent.getIntersection(...) but it work only with extents wich are rectangle and therefore give very imprecise results.
I have a map and a layer that is built and added through
var layer = new ol.layer.Vector{(...)};
map.addLayer(layer);
And I add a layer through interaction, as shown in this example: http://openlayers.org/en/v3.6.0/examples/draw-features.html?q=draw
(We use the Circle selection.)
I would like to get he intersection between the lines in the fist layer and the shape (surface) drawn through interaction.
So far, I know that I can catch the event:
var draw = new ol.interaction.Draw{(...)};
draw.on('drawend', function(event){(...)};
But so far I have no clue on what information I can get from the event and how to match it with the layer.

Cubic Bezier Curve between two points on a sphere in three.js

I'm letting the user click on two points on a sphere and I would then like to draw a line between the two points along the surface of the sphere (basically on the great circle). I've been able to get the coordinates of the two selected points and draw a QuadraticBezierCurve3 between the points, but I need to be using CubicBezierCurve3. The problem is is that I have no clue how to find the two control points.
Part of the issue is everything I find is for circular arcs and only deals with [x,y] coordinates (whereas I'm working with [x,y,z]). I found this other question which I used to get a somewhat-working solution using QuadraticBezierCurve3. I've found numerous other pages with math/code like this, this, and this, but I really just don't know what to apply. Something else I came across mentioned the tangents (to the selected points), their intersection, and their midpoints. But again, I'm unsure of how to do that in 3D space (since the tangent can go in more than one direction, i.e. a plane).
An example of my code: http://jsfiddle.net/GhB82/
To draw the line, I'm using:
function drawLine(point) {
var middle = [(pointA['x'] + pointB['x']) / 2, (pointA['y'] + pointB['y']) / 2, (pointA['z'] + pointB['z']) / 2];
var curve = new THREE.QuadraticBezierCurve3(new THREE.Vector3(pointA['x'], pointA['y'], pointA['z']), new THREE.Vector3(middle[0], middle[1], middle[2]), new THREE.Vector3(pointB['x'], pointB['y'], pointB['z']));
var path = new THREE.CurvePath();
path.add(curve);
var curveMaterial = new THREE.LineBasicMaterial({
color: 0xFF0000
});
curvedLine = new THREE.Line(path.createPointsGeometry(20), curveMaterial);
scene.add(curvedLine);
}
Where pointA and pointB are arrays containing the [x,y,z] coordinates of the selected points on the sphere. I need to change the QuadraticBezierCurve3 to CubicBezierCurve3, but again, I'm really at a loss on finding those control points.
I have a description on how to fit cubic curves to circular arcs over at http://pomax.github.io/bezierinfo/#circles_cubic, the 3D case is essentially the same in that you need to find out the (great) circular cross-section your two points form on the sphere, and then build the cubic Bezier section along that circle.
Downside: Unless your arc is less than or equal to roughly a quarter circle, one curve is not going to be enough, you'll need two or more. You can't actually model true circular curves with Bezier curves, so using cubic instead of quadratic just means you can approximate a longer arc segment before it starts to look horribly off.
So on a completely different solution note: if you have an arc command available, much better to use that than to roll your own (and if three.js doesn't support them, definitely worth filing a feature request for, I'd think)

How do I 'wrap' a plane over a sphere with three.js?

I am relatively new to three.js and am trying to position and manipulate a plane object to have the effect of laying over the surface of a sphere object (or any for that matter), so that the plane takes the form of the object surface. The intention is to be able to move the plane on the surface later on.
I position the plane in front of the sphere and index through the plane's vertices casting a ray towards the sphere to detect the intersection with the sphere. I then try to change the z position of said vertices, but it does not achieve the desired result. Can anyone give me some guidance on how to get this working, or indeed suggest another method?
This is how I attempt to change the vertices (with an offset of 1 to be visible 'on' the sphere surface);
planeMesh.geometry.vertices[vertexIndex].z = collisionResults[0].distance - 1;
Making sure to set the following before rendering;
planeMesh.geometry.verticesNeedUpdate = true;
planeMesh.geometry.normalsNeedUpdate = true;
I have a fiddle that shows where I am, here I cast my rays in z and I do not get intersections (collisions) with the sphere, and cannot change the plane in the manner I wish.
http://jsfiddle.net/stokewoggle/vuezL/
You can rotate the camera around the scene with the left and right arrows (in chrome anyway) to see the shape of the plane. I have made the sphere see through as I find it useful to see the plane better.
EDIT: Updated fiddle and corrected description mistake.
Sorry for the delay, but it took me a couple of days to figure this one out. The reason why the collisions were not working was because (like we had suspected) the planeMesh vertices are in local space, which is essentially the same as starting in the center of the sphere and not what you're expecting. At first, I thought a quick-fix would be to apply the worldMatrix like stemkoski did on his github three.js collision example I linked to, but that didn't end up working either because the plane itself is defined in x and y coordinates, up and down, left and right - but no z information (depth) is made locally when you create a flat 2D planeMesh.
What ended up working is manually setting the z component of each vertex of the plane. You had originaly wanted the plane to be at z = 201, so I just moved that code inside the loop that goes through each vertex and I manually set each vertex to z = 201; Now, all the ray start-positions were correct (globally) and having a ray direction of (0,0,-1) resulted in correct collisions.
var localVertex = planeMesh.geometry.vertices[vertexIndex].clone();
localVertex.z = 201;
One more thing was in order to make the plane-wrap absolutely perfect in shape, instead of using (0,0,-1) as each ray direction, I manually calculated each ray direction by subtracting each vertex from the sphere's center position location and normalizing the resulting vector. Now, the collisionResult intersection point will be even better.
var directionVector = new THREE.Vector3();
directionVector.subVectors(sphereMesh.position, localVertex);
directionVector.normalize();
var ray = new THREE.Raycaster(localVertex, directionVector);
Here is a working example:
http://jsfiddle.net/FLyaY/1/
As you can see, the planeMesh fits snugly on the sphere, kind of like a patch or a band-aid. :)
Hope this helps. Thanks for posting the question on three.js's github page - I wouldn't have seen it here. At first I thought it was a bug in THREE.Raycaster but in the end it was just user (mine) error. I learned a lot about collision code from working on this problem and I will be using it later down the line in my own 3D game projects. You can check out one of my games at: https://github.com/erichlof/SpacePong3D
Best of luck to you!
-Erich
Your ray start position is not good. Probably due to vertex coordinates being local to the plane. You start the raycast from inside the sphere so it never hits anything.
I changed the ray start position like this as a test and get 726 collisions:
var rayStart = new THREE.Vector3(0, 0, 500);
var ray = new THREE.Raycaster(rayStart, new THREE.Vector3(0, 0, -1));
Forked jsfiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/H5YSL/
I think you need to transform the vertex coordinates to world coordinates to get the position correctly. That should be easy to figure out from docs and examples.

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