Triangle Normals

Now that we understand the geometric implications of a normal it is easy to figure out how to transform them.

On a faceted planar surface, vectors in the tangent plane can be computed using surface points as follows.

Normals are always orthogonal to the tangent space at a point. Thus, given two tangent vectors we can compute the normal as follows:


This normal is perpendicular to both of these tangent vectors.

Lecture 16   Slide 29   6.837 Fall '00