Terrain Lighting: Strange lines

I've got some weird lighting going on with my terrain. It's only in specific places, but it looks something like this:
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...weirdlines.png
It looks really bad in that one, but other places it's not noticeable at all.

Heres a pic with the lines drawn in:
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...ial/weird2.png

Each pair of triangles seem to get lighter as you move toward the hypotenuse. Anyone else had this problem or know where in general the problem might be coming from?

Yes I've had that problem before. It happens when your normals are incorrect. You are probably computing normals using the wrong winding order for your system. So the lighted vertex of the quad should actually be the dark portion of the quad. It's hard to explain but it gives really odd renders such as the one you've shown.

EDIT:

You may also have some backlighting happening. If you have culling turned off and are using infinite diffuse light you could be seeing the lighting from the other side of the quad.

I've had this problem before as I said earlier but I don't remember exactly what caused it and that really irritates me. :D

Thanks, great information. I don't think it is the culling. I enabled it, but still got the same results. I am however ignorant to how exactly gl culling works. I think it's most likely the first issue you mentioned. Unfortunately I don't know what it means. I'm going to do some Googling, but if you have any references that would help me then link me please.

Thanks!

edit: OK, so When I did try culling I had to enable front face culling for it to work. Then when I changed the winding order it would work properly with back culling. The strange lighting persisted either way I did it though. To change the winding order I was just drawing verts 2, 1, then 0 instead of doing 0, 1, then 2. Is this really changing the winding order?

You might be computing the normals wrong in general, try rendering them.

I've been messing with it a lot. The normals look fine. I just can't figure out what's causing it.

I calculate the normals for every triangle, then use those normals to calculate the normals for each vertex. Here is the function that calculates the vertex normals. Can someone please look over it for me?

Code:

void Map::calcVertexNorms() { float l; pos normal; normal.x = normal.y = normal.z = 0.0f; int pitch = numTrisW*2; for (int i=0; i < pitch*numTrisH; i+=2) { normal.x += mapTris[i].norm.x; normal.y += mapTris[i].norm.y; normal.z += mapTris[i].norm.z; normal.x += mapTris[i+1].norm.x; normal.y += mapTris[i+1].norm.y; normal.z += mapTris[i+1].norm.z; if (i - pitch > 0) { normal.x += mapTris[i-pitch].norm.x; normal.y += mapTris[i-pitch].norm.y; normal.z += mapTris[i-pitch].norm.z; } if (i - pitch > 0 && i % pitch != 0 && i % pitch != 1) { normal.x += mapTris[i-pitch-1].norm.x; normal.y += mapTris[i-pitch-1].norm.y; normal.z += mapTris[i-pitch-1].norm.z; normal.x += mapTris[i-pitch-2].norm.x; normal.y += mapTris[i-pitch-2].norm.y; normal.z += mapTris[i-pitch-2].norm.z; } if (i % pitch != 0) { normal.x += mapTris[i-1].norm.x; normal.y += mapTris[i-1].norm.y; normal.z += mapTris[i-1].norm.z; } l = sqrtf((normal.x * normal.x) + (normal.y * normal.y) + (normal.z * normal.z)); normal.x /= l; normal.y /= l; normal.z /= l; mapTris[i].verts[0].norm = normal; mapTris[i+1].verts[0].norm = normal; if (i - pitch > 0) { mapTris[i-pitch].verts[1].norm = normal; } if (i - pitch > 0 && i % pitch != 0 && i % pitch != 1) { mapTris[i-pitch-1].verts[1].norm = normal; mapTris[i-pitch-2].verts[2].norm = normal; } if (i % pitch != 0) { mapTris[i-1].verts[2].norm = normal; } } }

If you need any clarifications let me know, because I made this on my own with out looking at any other terrain engines.

well for starters, this code doesn't do anything.

Code:

normal.x /= l; normal.y /= l; normal.z /= l;

You need to normalize by dividing each component by the magnitude of the vector, dividing by 1 doesn't change anything!

Second, you're assigning the same normal to all vertices, this is equivalent to just doing per poly lighting. To compute the normal for each vertex, you need need to consider all surrounding triangles.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Perspective

well for starters, this code doesn't do anything.

Code:

normal.x /= l; normal.y /= l; normal.z /= l;

You need to normalize by dividing each component by the magnitude of the vector, dividing by 1 doesn't change anything!

Read the line above, it's "lowercase L", not "one" :)

hah! it looks exactly the same with my font set.

Every vertex in your map has 6 neighbouring triangles, but I don't see that you sum 6 normals (or perhaps I'm just to lazy to really understand your code)

Try reducing the map to just a couple of triangles, then it's much easier to debug the code. Create a 2 by 4 strip that has a very steep angle, that would make it possible to spot where the problem is.

Perspective, I am taking into account each triangle that is around the vertex. I think maybe you are not understand because I am assigning the calculated normal to the proper verticies of the surrounding triangles. Every triangle has its own set of 3 verticies. I don't know if this is how it's supposed to be done or not, but it's not the problem at the moment.

fractality, you've got it. I have a variable called "normal" I set it to 0, Then "+=" 'd all the face normals. Your suggestion to use only a few triangles sounds like a good idea.

Now I've actually read the code carefully and I can't say I see anything wrong with it. The indexes seems to be correct.
Are you sure you put the right normal on the right vertex when you send the triangles to the graphics card?
It would probably look a lot like on your pictures if you had accidentally swapped around the normals on the vertices of the triangles (like normal 0 on vertex 1 etc).
Double check that, otherwise I've no more ideas on what could be wrong.

Try switching between gouraud and flat shading, maybe that will reveal something.

The shade mode is clearly not the problem since the values at the vertices are being interpolated in the example screenshots. It is the normals that are the problem.