Facet Normals
A surface normal, is a vector that is perpendicular to that surface. When applied to computer graphics, and in particular when it is applied to meshes composed of polygons, it is often called a facet normal. In other words, consider a mesh composed of triangles. The facet normal is that vector which is perpendicular to each triangle. It is often simplified to normal, for the purposes of abbreviation.
A normal can be calculated as the vector cross product of two edges of the triangle (or polygon), as long as those edges are not parallel.
1. int main(int argc, char **argv)
2. {
3. Cvector3 *vertex, *face_normal, a, b;
4. :
5. :
6. //
7. // Step 1. Loop thru faces; calculate face normals
8. //
9. for(i=0;i<number_of_triangles;i++) {
10. index1 = face[3*i+0];
11. index2 = face[3*i+1];
12. index3 = face[3*i+2];
13. a = vertex[index2] - vertex[index3];
14. b = vertex[index1] - vertex[index3];
15. face_normal.Cross(a,b);
16. }
17. :
18. :
19. return 0;
20. }