In gouraud shading, what is the T-junction issure and how to demonstrate it with OpenGL

Question

I noticed here in the Gouraud Shading part, it said that "T-Junctions with adjoining polygons can sometimes result in visual anomalies. In general, T-Junctions should be avoided".

It seems like the T-junction is about three surfaces in picture below share edges and the point A may have different normal vector due to it belongs to different surfaces.

But what is the effect when T-junction happened and how to use OpenGL to implement it? I tried set different normal for each vertex of each rectangle and put a light in the scene, however, I didn't see anything strange in the junction point A.

Here is my code:

glColor3f(1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f);
glBegin(GL_QUADS);
glNormal3f(0, 0,1);
glVertex3f(-5.0f, 5.0f, 0.0f);
glNormal3f(0, 1,1);
glVertex3f(5.0f, 5.0f, 0.0f);
glNormal3f(1, 1,1);
glVertex3f(5.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f);
glNormal3f(0, -1,1);
glVertex3f(-5.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f);
glEnd();

glColor3f(0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f);
glBegin(GL_QUADS);
glNormal3f(1, 0,1);
glVertex3f(-5.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f);
glNormal3f(1, 2,1);
glVertex3f(0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f);
glNormal3f(0, 0,1);
glVertex3f(0.0f, -5.0f, 0.0f);
glNormal3f(0, 1, 2);
glVertex3f(-5.0f, -5.0f, 0.0f);
glEnd();

glColor3f(0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f);
glBegin(GL_QUADS);
glNormal3f(1, 1, 3);
glVertex3f(0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f);
glNormal3f(0, -2, 5);
glVertex3f(5.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f);
glNormal3f(-1, 1, 1);
glVertex3f(5.0f, -5.0f, 0.0f);
glNormal3f(1, -2, 0);
glVertex3f(0.0f, -5.0f, 0.0f);
glEnd();

The point light is in (0, 0, 10) as well as the camera. The result below has no visual anomaly I think. Maybe normals should be kind of special?

Is there anything wrong I did? Could anyone give me some hints to make this happen?

Answer 1

T-Junction is bad for Gouraud shading and in geometry in general.

First remember that goraud shading, is a method for light interpolation used in the fixed pipeline era where light is interpolated accross the vertices, making mesh tesselation (the number and connectivity) of the vertices directly affect the shading. Having t-junction will give a sudden discontinuity in how the final interpolated color looks (keep in mind that Gouraud shading has other problems, like under-sampling).

Gouraud shading directly use the vertex normals unlike Phong shading, and as a note don't confuse Phong shading with Phong lighting they are different

Note the case you are presenting is a t-junction but you won't notice any shading problem because the mesh is not tessellated enough and (it seems) you are not using any light. Try testing on a sphere with a t-junction.

Regarding geometry t-junction is considered a degenerate case. Because at that edge/polygon the geometric mesh loses consistency, you no longer have two edges connected at their ends, and you lose the polygon loop property (read: directed edges). It's usually a tricky problem to solve, a solution could be to triangulate the polygons so that the t-juction edge is now properly connected.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gouraud_shading