What is a surface normal?

[StarJ3M]

I’ve been studying a bit more about raycast, and I’ve come across something called surface normals. I’m not sure what a normal is though, or what a surface normal is, so what is the point of these two things, and what are they’re uses?

[AustnBlox (Austin)]

I have found a thread already posted on the DevForum explaining what a Surface Normal is:

Explanation of Surface Normal?

I know when you raycast, 4 pieces of information are returned, one being the surface normal. Im just wondering what a surface normal is and what I can do with it. I’ve seen stuff on the wiki about reflecting rays using surface normals and I’ve also seen other scripts use them for different things, but I have no idea what it is, what it’s for, or what to do with it.

[PuffoThePufferfish (Puffo)]

The normal is just the direction of whatever given geometry is facing

(the direction perpendicular to the surface)

[StarJ3M]

Couldn’t find that after searching up the title of this post. Thanks, I’ll give it a read or two.