Collision Callbacks and Triggers

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Contact Information

The best way to determine if collisions happened between existing objects in the world, is to iterate over all contact manifolds. This should be done during a simulation tick (substep) callback, because contacts might be added and removed during several substeps of a single stepSimulation call.

A contact manifold is a cache that contains all contact points between pairs of collision objects. A good way is to iterate over all pairs of objects in the entire collision/dynamics world:

//Assume world->stepSimulation or world->performDiscreteCollisionDetection has been called

    int numManifolds = world->getDispatcher()->getNumManifolds();
        btPersistentManifold* contactManifold =  world->getDispatcher()->getManifoldByIndexInternal(i);

        int numContacts = contactManifold->getNumContacts();
            btManifoldPoint& pt = contactManifold->getContactPoint(j);
            if (pt.getDistance()<0.f)
                const btVector3& ptA = pt.getPositionWorldOnA();
                const btVector3& ptB = pt.getPositionWorldOnB();
                const btVector3& normalOnB = pt.m_normalWorldOnB;

See Bullet/Demos/CollisionInterfaceDemo for a sample implementation.


A more efficient way is to iterate only over the pairs of objects that you are interested in. This can be done using a btGhostObject. A btGhostObject keeps track of its own overlapping pairs:

btManifoldArray   manifoldArray;
btBroadphasePairArray& pairArray = ghostObject->getOverlappingPairCache()->getOverlappingPairArray();
int numPairs = pairArray.size();

for (int i=0;i<numPairs;i++)

    const btBroadphasePair& pair = pairArray[i];

    //unless we manually perform collision detection on this pair, the contacts are in the dynamics world paircache:
    btBroadphasePair* collisionPair = dynamicsWorld->getPairCache()->findPair(pair.m_pProxy0,pair.m_pProxy1);
    if (!collisionPair)

    if (collisionPair->m_algorithm)

    for (int j=0;j<manifoldArray.size();j++)
        btPersistentManifold* manifold = manifoldArray[j];
        btScalar directionSign = manifold->getBody0() == m_ghostObject ? btScalar(-1.0) : btScalar(1.0);
        for (int p=0;p<manifold->getNumContacts();p++)
            const btManifoldPoint&pt = manifold->getContactPoint(p);
            if (pt.getDistance()<0.f)
                const btVector3& ptA = pt.getPositionWorldOnA();
                const btVector3& ptB = pt.getPositionWorldOnB();
                const btVector3& normalOnB = pt.m_normalWorldOnB;
                /// work here

You have to add once some special callback to world to make the ghosts work.

btDiscreteDynamicsWorld* dynamicsWorld = CreateDiscreteDynamicsWorld(); // Assume the world is now initializing...
ghostPairCallback = new btGhostPairCallback();

See Bullet\Demos\CharacterDemo\CharacterDemo.cpp and src\BulletDynamics\Character\btKinematicCharacterController.cpp (btKinematicCharacterController::recoverFromPenetration) for a sample implementation.


Bullet 2.76 onwards let you perform an instant query on the world (btCollisionWorld or btDiscreteDynamicsWorld) using the contactTest query. The contactTest query will peform a collision test against all overlapping objects in the world, and produces the results using a callback. The query object doesn't need to be part of the world. In order for an efficient query on large worlds, it is important that the broadphase aabbTest is accelerated, for example using the btDbvtBroadphase or btAxisSweep3 broadphase.

An advantage of this method is that you can perform collision tests at a reduced temporal resolution if you do not need collision tests at every physics tic. It is also convenient to use with a pre-existing object in the world, whereas btGhostObject would require synchronizing with the target object. However, a downside is that collision detection is being duplicated for the target object (if it already exists in the world), so frequent or widespread collision tests may become less efficient than iterating over previously generated collision pairs.

Usage example:

struct ContactSensorCallback : public btCollisionWorld::ContactResultCallback {

    //! Constructor, pass whatever context you want to have available when processing contacts
    /*! You may also want to set m_collisionFilterGroup and m_collisionFilterMask
     *  (supplied by the superclass) for needsCollision() */
    ContactSensorCallback(btRigidBody& tgtBody , YourContext& context /*, ... */)
        : btCollisionWorld::ContactResultCallback(), body(tgtBody), ctxt(context) { }

    btRigidBody& body; //!< The body the sensor is monitoring
    YourContext& ctxt; //!< External information for contact processing

    //! If you don't want to consider collisions where the bodies are joined by a constraint, override needsCollision:
    /*! However, if you use a btCollisionObject for #body instead of a btRigidBody,
     *  then this is unnecessary—checkCollideWithOverride isn't available */
    virtual bool needsCollision(btBroadphaseProxy* proxy) const {
        // superclass will check m_collisionFilterGroup and m_collisionFilterMask
            return false;
        // if passed filters, may also want to avoid contacts between constraints
        return body.checkCollideWithOverride(static_cast<btCollisionObject*>(proxy->m_clientObject));

    //! Called with each contact for your own processing (e.g. test if contacts fall in within sensor parameters)
    virtual btScalar addSingleResult(btManifoldPoint& cp,
        const btCollisionObjectWrapper* colObj0,int partId0,int index0,
        const btCollisionObjectWrapper* colObj1,int partId1,int index1)
        btVector3 pt; // will be set to point of collision relative to body
        if(colObj0->m_collisionObject==&body) {
            pt = cp.m_localPointA;
        } else {
            assert(colObj1->m_collisionObject==&body && "body does not match either collision object");
            pt = cp.m_localPointB;
        // do stuff with the collision point
        return 0; // There was a planned purpose for the return value of addSingleResult, but it is not used so you can ignore it.

btRigidBody* tgtBody /* = ... */;
YourContext foo;
ContactSensorCallback callback(*tgtBody, foo);


Bullet 2.76 onwards provides the contactPairTest to perform collision detection between two specific collision objects only. Contact results are passed on using the provided callback. They don't need to be inserted in the world. See btCollisionWorld::contactPairTest in Bullet/src/BulletCollision/CollisionDispatch/btCollisionWorld.h for implementation details.

Contact Callbacks

Be careful when using contact callbacks: They may be called too frequently for your purposes. Bullet supports custom callbacks at various points in the collision system. The callbacks themselves are very simply implemented as global variables that you set to point at appropriate functions. Before you can expect them to be called you must set an appropriate flag in your rigid body:

mBody->setCollisionFlags(mBody->getCollisionFlags() |

There are three collision callbacks:


This is called whenever a contact is added (note that the same contact may be added multiple times before it is processed). From here, you can modify some properties (e.g. friction) of the contact point. Note: gContactAddedCallback does not appear to work when using multithreaded solvers.

typedef bool (*ContactAddedCallback)(
    btManifoldPoint& cp,
    const btCollisionObject* colObj0,
    int partId0,
    int index0,
    const btCollisionObject* colObj1,
    int partId1,
    int index1);

As of the current implementation of Bullet (2.82), the return value of this function is ignored.


This is called immediately after the collision has actually been processed.

typedef bool (*ContactProcessedCallback)(
    btManifoldPoint& cp,
    void* body0,void* body1);

Note that body0 and body1 are pointers to the same btCollisionObjects as colObj0 and colObj1 in the gContactAddedCallback (exactly why this function prototype is declared differently is unclear).



This is called immediately after the contact point is destroyed.

typedef bool (*ContactDestroyedCallback)(
    void* userPersistentData);

The passed userPersistentData argument is the value of the m_userPersistentData member of the btManifoldPoint which has been destroyed (this can be set in gContactAddedCallback or gContactProcessedCallback).

Note that gContactDestroyedCallback will not be called for any contact point unless cp.m_userPersistentData is set! You must set this (to some value other than NULL) in a prior contact added/processed callback in order to receive a destroyed callback.


Collision objects with a callback still have collision response with dynamic rigid bodies. In order to use collision objects as trigger, you have to disable the collision response.

mBody->setCollisionFlags(mBody->getCollisionFlags() |

Triggers and the btKinematicCharacterController

The stock btKinematicCharacterController doesn't appear to properly behave with ghost objects that have CF_NO_CONTACT_RESPONSE set. It seems to ignore that flag and act as if the objects don't have that flag set.

The solution is to create a custom character controller based on the btKinematicCharacterController class, and make a few changes, as detailed in this forum post:

Add this IF into the method btKinematicCharacterController::recoverFromPenetration, under the btBroadphasePair* collisionPair = &m_ghostObj... line:

//for trigger filtering
if (!static_cast<btCollisionObject*>(collisionPair->m_pProxy0->m_clientObject)->hasContactResponse() ||

And add this IF to the beginning of btKinematicClosestNotMeConvexResultCallback::addSingleResult:

//for trigger filtering
if (!convexResult.m_hitCollisionObject->hasContactResponse())
   return btScalar(1.0);
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