Using RigidBody

What is a rigid body?

A rigid body is one that is directly controlled by the physics engine in order to simulate the behavior of physical objects. In order to define the shape of the body, it must have one or more Shape3D objects assigned. Note that setting the position of these shapes will affect the body's center of mass.

How to control a rigid body

A rigid body's behavior can be altered by setting its properties, such as mass and weight. A physics material needs to be added to the rigid body to adjust its friction and bounce, and set if it's absorbent and/or rough. These properties can be set in the Inspector or via code. See RigidBody3D and PhysicsMaterial for the full list of properties and their effects.

There are several ways to control a rigid body's movement, depending on your desired application.

If you only need to place a rigid body once, for example to set its initial location, you can use the methods provided by the Node3D node, such as set_global_transform() or look_at(). However, these methods cannot be called every frame or the physics engine will not be able to correctly simulate the body's state. As an example, consider a rigid body that you want to rotate so that it points towards another object. A common mistake when implementing this kind of behavior is to use look_at() every frame, which breaks the physics simulation. Below, we'll demonstrate how to implement this correctly.

The fact that you can't use set_global_transform() or look_at() methods doesn't mean that you can't have full control of a rigid body. Instead, you can control it by using the _integrate_forces() callback. In this method, you can add forces, apply impulses, or set the velocity in order to achieve any movement you desire.

The "look at" method

As described above, using the Node3D's look_at() method can't be used each frame to follow a target. Here is a custom look_at() method called look_follow() that will work with rigid bodies:

extends RigidBody3D

var speed: float = 0.1

func look_follow(state: PhysicsDirectBodyState3D, current_transform: Transform3D, target_position: Vector3) -> void:
    var forward_local_axis: Vector3 = Vector3(1, 0, 0)
    var forward_dir: Vector3 = (current_transform.basis * forward_local_axis).normalized()
    var target_dir: Vector3 = (target_position - current_transform.origin).normalized()
    var local_speed: float = clampf(speed, 0, acos(forward_dir.dot(target_dir)))
    if forward_dir.dot(target_dir) > 1e-4:
        state.angular_velocity = local_speed * forward_dir.cross(target_dir) / state.step

func _integrate_forces(state):
    var target_position = $my_target_node3d_node.global_transform.origin
    look_follow(state, global_transform, target_position)

This method uses the rigid body's angular_velocity property to rotate the body. The axis to rotate around is given by the cross product between the current forward direction and the direction one wants to look in. The clamp is a simple method used to prevent the amount of rotation from going past the direction which is wanted to be looked in, as the total amount of rotation needed is given by the arccosine of the dot product. This method can be used with axis_lock_angular_* as well. If more precise control is needed, solutions such as ones relying on Quaternion may be required, as discussed in Using 3D transforms.