522 Chapter 9 Physics
The possibilities are endless. The
IKController and SkinController classes may
also be used for deformation. Animation via controllers directly supports the concept
of deformation: It is just a matter of animating the data that directly, or indirectly,
affects the vertices of a mesh. The popular rag doll physics is an excellent example of
how to blend together deformable objects and collision detection and response.
9.4 Rigid Bodies
The last topic of the chapter is rigid bodies. Creating a general physics engine that
handles interacting bodies is quite difficult. However, an engine will contain the foun-
dations for computing unconstrained motion using Newton’s equations of motion.
The collision detection system computes the ph