Getting the normal vector for any point on a terrain

Troubleshooting terramonkey
1

This is something rather simple with jME2, the TerrainBlock class contains a method getSurfaceNormal() which return the normal vector for any arbitrary point on a terrain. Is the something similar in TerraMonkey? I can’t seem to find it.



Thanks

2

So I came up with using ray picking and return the normal of the intersection point, as follows:



[java]

public Vector3f getNormal(double x, double z) {

// create a vertical ray that intersects with the terrain,

// then pick the triangle and return the normal.

Ray ray = new Ray(new Vector3f((float)x, getHeight(x, z)-10, (float)z), Vector3f.UNIT_Y);

CollisionResults results = new CollisionResults();

picker.getTerrainIntersection(ray, results);

if (results.size() > 0) {

return results.getClosestCollision().getContactNormal();

} else {

return null;

}

}

[/java]



Any potential problems with this solution?