Basic OpenGL lighting question

Question

I think this is an extremely stupid and newbie question, but then I am a newbie in graphics and openGL. Having drawn a sphere and put a light source nearby, also having specified ambient light, I started experimenting with light and material values and came to a surprising conclusion: the colors which we specify with glColor* do not matter at all when lighting is enabled. Instead, the equivalent is the material's ambient component. Is this conclusion correct? Thanks

Answer 1

If the lighting is enabled, then instead of the vertex color, the material color (well, colors - there are several of them for different types of response to light) is used. Material colors are specified by glMaterial* functions.

If you want to reuse your code, you can use glEnable(GL_COLOR_MATERIAL) and glColorMaterial(GL_AMBIENT_AND_DIFFUSE) to have your old glColor* calls mapped to material color automatically.

(And please switch to shaders as fast as possible - the shader approach is both easier and more powerful)