a normal to a surface is a vector that is perpendicular to it. For a the
simple example of a plane, it comes out of the center and would point along
the y axis if the plane is in the x-z plane. Hope this helps
Eric
> What exactly are Normals? (I know there used to calculate which face gets
> lighting)
> And How do I define normals for example for the following TriangleArray:
>
> private static final float[] verts =
> {
> -1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f,
> 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f,
> 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.5f,
>
> -1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f,
> 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f,
> 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.5f,
>
> 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f,
> 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f,
> 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.5f,
>
> -1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f,
> 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f,
> 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f,
> };
>
> (this is a shape that has four faces and makes up something like a
pyramid)
> I just copy and pasted the above verts into the normal array to see what
> happened and it didnt exactly work:
>
> private static final float[] normals =
> {
> -1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f,
> 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f,
> 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.5f,
>
> -1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f,
> 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f,
> 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.5f,
>
> 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f,
> 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f,
> 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.5f,
>
> -1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f,
> 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f,
> 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f,
> };
>
> I then created the shape with the following code:
>
> Tarray = new TriangleArray(12, TriangleArray.COLOR_3 |
> TriangleArray.COORDINATES | TriangleArray.NORMALS);
> Tarray.setCoordinates(0, verts);
> Tarray.setNormals(0, normals);
> app = new Appearance();
> mat = new Material(aColor, eColor, dColor, sColor, shinyness);
> app.setMaterial(mat);
> shp = new Shape3D(Tarray, app);
>
>
> Thank you
>
> Thomas M Clarke
>
>
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