Patent ID: 7084869

Claim:
A method of determining a depth of penetration of a first object and a second object, the method comprising acts of: constructing a first representation of the first object including a first set of primitives having a first core representation, the first set of primitives including a first bounding volume hierarchy associated with the first core representation, and constructing a second representation of the second object including a second set of primitives having a second core representation, the second set of primitives including a second bounding volume hierarchy associated with the second core representation, the second representation defining at least a surface of the second object; determining at least an original Voronoi diagram of the second representation; detecting at least one intersection between the first representation and the second representation, wherein the act of detecting the at least one intersection includes an act of determining whether each primitive of the first core representation is an intersecting primitive of the second core representation by traversing the first and second bounding volume hierarchies; and determining a distance from the at least one point of intersection to the surface of the second object based on a location of the at least one point of intersection within the original Voronoi diagram, including determining a penetration direction from the at least one intersection to the surface of the second object.