surface normal orientations some rendering programs require that all surface normals point in the same direction ie on a closed cube all normals point outwards you can use the points on the faces to determine the direction of the normal by making sure that all points are either in clockwise or counter clockwise order how do you go about orienting all normals in the same direction given a set of points edges and faces say that you had a cube with all faces that have their normals facing outwards except for one face what s the best way to realize that face is flipped and should have it s points re ordered i thought i had a good way of telling this but then realized that the algorithm i had would only tell you if you had points in clockwise order for a d polygon i d like something for d data any hints tips references would be appreciated steve where humor is concerned there are no standards no one can say what is good or bad although you can be sure that everyone will john kenneth galbraith these opinions are my own
