Creation and Rendering of 3D world

I recently created a 3d world based on a picture that i drew(see below).



I then applied several calculations to provide the following renderings. Please remember that you can see the images in much more detail by clicking on them. This may be necessary to see the difference between using per face normals and using per vertex normals



The above shows the world without any colour blending done or any normals to the terrain being calculated.



The above shows the same world with just a single normal calculated per face of each polygon. This enables lighting to vary for each face.



The normals were then calculated per vertex instead of per face to provide the above smoother picture.

It is much faster and easier to create a 3D effect by just making the colour of each vertex darker depending on its height, ie the higher it is, the lighter green it is. This means that normals do not have to be calculated which saves a lot of CPU. It results in the following:



If one was to then apply normals per face for lighting the following would show:


And if you applied the colouring effect with normals for every vertex you get the following: