However you can extend this idea for convex-convex collision detection/penetration depth using cylindrical or spherical heightfields.
Do you mean using cylindrical/spherical coordinates instead of cartesian? How would this help?
Otherwise:
A heightfield maps distances from a 2D plane (perhaps usually a fixed floor, but could be arbitrary). Spherical and cylindrical heightfields map distances from a point or line-segment, respectively. Support for multiple types seems useful, but I would personally hesitate to call them extended cases of heightfields from planes. The heightfield extensions I have seen before do include signed distance fields from each triangle of a tri-mesh. Also signed distance fields from point-sets are used to define some point-set surfaces.Statistics: Posted by dcoming — Wed Jan 04, 2006 12:11 pm
]]>