Issue with lighting, possibly normal related? - opengl

Question

I'm using OpenGL 3.3 and having some odd lighting issue, I'll first show two screenshots at different angles and then give the shader code.
First angle:
Second angle:
What you see here is:
A cube, with its middle on the origin;
A directional light source, coming from the yellow point through the origin;
In cyan you see the normals of the vertices.
I know the normals of the vertices are "wrong", but I was exactly trying to debug those.
What I expected was: A (from top-to-bottom) varying color of every face, depending on the position of the "sun" and the camera.
But what I get is that two parts of the cube (upper and lower) that both have varying colors, but not in the way I expected.
There is code for shadows in the shader, but I deliberately disabled them here to avoid confusion.
Vertex shader:
#version 430 core
layout(location = 0) in vec4 position;
layout(location = 1) in vec3 normal;
layout(location = 0) uniform mat4 model_matrix;
layout(location = 1) uniform mat4 view_matrix;
layout(location = 2) uniform mat4 proj_matrix;
layout(location = 3) uniform mat4 shadow_matrix;
out VS_OUT {
vec3 N;
vec3 L;
vec3 V;
vec4 shadow_coord;
} vs_out;
uniform vec4 light_pos = vec4(-20.0, 7.5, -20.0, 1.0);
void main(void) {
vec4 local_light_pos = view_matrix * light_pos;
vec4 p = view_matrix * model_matrix * position;
//normal
vs_out.N = normalize(normal);
//light vector
vs_out.L = local_light_pos.xyz - p.xyz;
//view vector
vs_out.V = -p.xyz;
//light space coordinates
vs_out.shadow_coord = shadow_matrix * position;
gl_Position = proj_matrix * p;
}
Fragment shader:
#version 430 core
out vec4 color;
in VS_OUT {
vec3 N;
vec3 L;
vec3 V;
vec4 shadow_coord;
} fs_in;
layout(binding = 0) uniform sampler2DShadow shadow_tex;
uniform vec3 light_ambient_albedo = vec3(1.0);
uniform vec3 light_diffuse_albedo = vec3(1.0);
uniform vec3 light_specular_albedo = vec3(1.0);
uniform vec3 ambient_albedo = vec3(0.0, 0.2, 0.0);
uniform vec3 diffuse_albedo = vec3(0.2, 0.7, 0.2);
uniform vec3 specular_albedo = vec3(0.0, 0.0, 0.0);
uniform float specular_power = 128.0;
vec3 rgb_to_grayscale_luminosity(vec3 color) {
float value = color.r * 0.21 + color.g * 0.71 + color.b * 0.07;
return vec3(value);
}
void main(void) {
//normalize
vec3 N = normalize(fs_in.N);
vec3 L = normalize(fs_in.L);
vec3 V = normalize(fs_in.V);
//calculate R
vec3 R = reflect(-L, N);
//calcualte ambient
vec3 ambient = ambient_albedo * light_ambient_albedo;
//calculate diffuse
vec3 diffuse = max(dot(N, L), 0.0) * diffuse_albedo * light_diffuse_albedo;
//calcualte spcular
vec3 specular = pow(max(dot(R, V), 0.0), specular_power) * specular_albedo * light_specular_albedo;
//apply shadow and write color
float shadow_value = textureProj(shadow_tex, fs_in.shadow_coord);
if (shadow_value > 0.0001 || true) {
//no shadow
color = vec4(ambient + diffuse + specular, 1.0);
}
else {
//in shadow
//color = vec4(rgb_to_grayscale_luminosity((ambient + diffuse) * (1 - shadow_value)), 0.5);
//color = vec4(vec3(shadow_value), 0.5);
color = vec4((ambient + diffuse) * (1 - shadow_value) * 0.5, 1.0);
}
}
What could be going wrong here?

Answer 1

Assuming your normals only point upwards/downwards (x=0 and z=0 in the OpenGL coordinate system) what you see should be the expected behavior (no bug concerning the shaders/graphics pipeline).
During the rasterization stage in the graphics pipeline the attributes are interpolated among the vertices (barycentric coordinates).
Assuming that all normals above the plane "y=0" are
"vec3(0, 1, 0)"
and all normals below this plane are
"vec3(0, -1, 0)"
then for every pixel the interpolated normal will be
"vec3(0, *, 0)" where * is >0 above the "y=0"-plane and <0 below that plane.
In your fragment shader you normalize all normals hence they will all again be
"vec3(0, 1, 0)" if the corresponding vertex lies above the "y=0"-plane and
"vec3(0, -1, 0)" if the corresponding vertex lies below that plane.
This will result in the same color for all vertices below and above the "y=0"-plane.
You could check this if you would remove the normal-"normalization" within the fragment shader or if you add a minimal offset to the x- or z-coordinate of some normals e.g.
vec3(0.0000001, +/-1, 0)