Minimum Distance Between Two Triangles in 3D Coordinates

Set of functions that allow to compute the miminum distance between two triangles in 3D space in MATLAB.

Triangles are defines as 1x9 MATLAB arrays, encoded as [x1,y1,z1, x2,y2,z2, x3,y3,z3], i.e., groups of 3 cartesian coordinates per vertex. The repository includes a simple test (minTriangDistTest) and a simple visualizer (minTriangDistVisualization), making it easier to understand how it works.

The simplest working example would be as follows:

T1 = randn(1, 9);
T2 = randn(1, 9);
[dist, p1, p2] = simdTriTri2(T1,T2);

A visualization example is here reported as well:

The code has been translated from optimized C++ SSE/SIMD directly into unoptimized MATLAB code. Variables, inputs, outputs, and function names have been kept the same for a 1-to-1 comparison with the original code.

Reference: Shellshear, E., & Ytterlid, R. (2014). Fast Distance Queries for Triangles, Lines, and Points using SSE Instructions. Journal of Computer Graphics Techniques (JCGT), 3(4), 86–110. Retrieved from http://jcgt.org/published/0003/04/05/