6.5 The Normal Vectors
You may have noticed that both diffuse and specular reflection depend on the
normal vector to the surface. How and where is this normal vector being defined?
We saw in Chapter 5 that the normal vector to a polygon (or to a vertex on
the polygon) determines the orientation of the polygon. This normal vector can
be used to determine front- vs. back-facing polygons: polygons: with normal
vectors facing away from the viewpoint are back-facing and are culled from the
scene, as shown in Fig.6.23. The normal vector also determines the orientation
of the polygon or to a vertex on the polygon, relative to the light sources. This
normal vector is used in the lighting calculations we looked into earlier. In
OpenGL, we can define the normal vector by using the commands