Given a quad, this is how you can calculate the normals for each face.
This works for triangles, as well as quad.
Loop through each face, and pass in 3 verticies. If you have a quad ABCD pass in ABD. For example for the front facing face on this cube, I would pass in, v2, v3, v0
// cube /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // v6----- v5 // /| /| // v1------v0| // | | | | // | |v7---|-|v4 // |/ |/ // v2------v3 |
This is in C++ which supports operator overloading, so keep that in mind, when you see p2-p1, its doing: (p2.x-p1.x; p2.y-p1.y; p2.z-p1.z; )
// Vec3f RibbonMesh::calcNormal( const Vec3f &p1, const Vec3f &p2, const Vec3f &p3 ) { Vec3f V1= (p2 - p1); Vec3f V2 = (p3 - p1); Vec3f surfaceNormal; surfaceNormal.x = (V1.y*V2.z) - (V1.z-V2.y); surfaceNormal.y = - ( (V2.z * V1.x) - (V2.x * V1.z) ); surfaceNormal.z = (V1.x-V2.y) - (V1.y-V2.x); // Dont forget to normalize if needed return surfaceNormal; } |