OpenGL Programming Guide

Chapter 6Lighting

Selecting a Lighting Model

Enabling Lighting

With OpenGL, you need to explicitly enable (or disable) lighting. If lighting isn't enabled, the current color is simply mapped onto the current vertex, and no calculations concerning normals, light sources, the lighting model, and material properties are performed. Here's how to enable lighting:

glEnable(GL_LIGHTING);

To disable lighting, call glDisable() with GL_LIGHTING as the argument.

You also need to explicitly enable each light source that you define, after you've specified the parameters for that source. Example 6-1 uses only one light, GL_LIGHT0:

glEnable(GL_LIGHT0); 

OpenGL Programming Guide