title: What's the purpose of a unit normal vector when creating a 3D shape?
body: <p>I understand that to create a shape (let's say a 3D sphere for an example) that I have to first find the vertex locations of the shape and second, use the parametric equation in order to create the x, y, z points of the triangle meshes. I am currently looking at a sample code to create shapes and it appears that after using the parametric equation in order to find the vectors of the triangle meshes, unit normals to the sphere at the vertices are found. </p>
  
  <p>I understand why regular vectors in the first step are used to create the 3D shape and that a normal vector is perpendicular to the shape object, but I don't understand why the unit normal vectors at the vertices are used to create the shapes? What's the purpose of finding the normal of the vectors?</p>