Posted by Schorsch on Jul 27, 2015; 12:21pm
URL: https://forum.jogamp.org/Manually-set-normal-vectors-are-ignored-for-backface-culling-tp4034976p4034979.html

Hi Julien,

thanks for your answer. You could be right about the culling. However, in the example you linked no normals are set manually. There I would indeed expect Java3D to do the backface culling based on some automated behaviour. My original question was about the case when there are manually defined normals.

I might be mistaken, but what sense does it make to provide a setter-method for manual normal vectors if these are not used by the API?
It could be, though, that the normals are only used for picking, but then rendering and picking would treat the geometries somehow differently. Would that make sense?

I'm a bit doubtful here. Do you see my point?

Are there any users out there who successfully use manual normal calculation, e.g. for distinguishing between inner walls and outer walls for geometrical objects?