Odd per pixel lighting effects

I recently wrote a shader for a terrain. When that worked, i wanted to move on to lighting, so i calculated normals, drew them to make sure they were ok, and proceeded to follow the lighthouse3d tutorial on per-pixel lighting (http://www.lighthouse3d.com/opengl/glsl/index.php?ogldir1). This was the resulting shader:

Vertex:


    // Send the height and texture coordinates //
    height = gl_Vertex.y;
    gl_TexCoord[0].xy = gl_MultiTexCoord0.xy;

    // Calculate the eye-space normal //
    normal = normalize(gl_NormalMatrix * gl_Normal);

    // Calculate the direction of the light //
    lightDir = normalize(vec3( gl_LightSource[0].position));

    // Compute the diffuse and ambient terms //
    diffuse = gl_FrontMaterial.diffuse * gl_LightSource[0].diffuse;
	ambient = gl_FrontMaterial.ambient * gl_LightSource[0].ambient;
	ambient += gl_LightModel.ambient * gl_FrontMaterial.ambient;

    // Set the position of the current vertex //
    gl_Position = gl_ModelViewProjectionMatrix * gl_Vertex;

Fragment:

    // Compute lighting //
    vec3 n;
	float NdotL;

	// The ambient term will always be present //
    vec4 lightColor = ambient;

	// Normalize the normal of the pixel //
    n = normalize(normal);

    // Compute the dot product between normal and ldir //
	NdotL = max(dot(n,lightDir),0.0f);

    // If the angle is not 0, the diffuse term must be calculated //
    if (NdotL > 0.0f)
    {
        lightColor += diffuse * NdotL;
    }

    gl_FragColor = lightColor;

that didnt work. The intensity of the light changed when i moved the camera, which is just wrong. Then i realized i had been setting my light position before my modelview transforms, so then i did this:

main.cpp


          glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT);

            glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW);
            glLoadIdentity();

            Cam.Look(); // Transforms happened here //

            GLfloat position[] = { 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f };
            glLightfv(GL_LIGHT0, GL_POSITION, position);


            //DrawGrid(&verts[0], 257, waterShader);
            DrawTerrain(&testTerrain);

that didnt work either. Same sort of problem, light intensity change based on the cameras distance. So then i tried putting the glLightfv call BEFORE the modelview transform, and got rid of the gl_NormalMatrix call in my vertex shader:

vertex:


...

    // Calculate the eye-space normal //
    normal = normalize(gl_Normal);

    // Calculate the direction of the light //
    lightDir = normalize(vec3( gl_LightSource[0].position));

...

That worked perfectly.

My question is simply why? It seems rather odd and if i dont understand it now it will come back to haunt me.

Thanks :smiley:

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