is it possible to use OpenGL lighting without declaring surface normals?

Question

is it possible to declare lighting on objects without declaring surfaces normals?

steps i'm willing to do are:

1. enable lighting
2. define surface material 
3. define lighting position
4. define lighting parms : ambient....

is it enough or do i have to put somewhere there also glNormal ?

Answer 1

You can't compute lighting without knowing what direction the surface is facing. That direction is called the surface normal. So either you're going to have to provide one, or you're going to have to compute one in a shader. And the latter is somewhat unlikely in the general case.

So yes, you need to provide vertex normals to do lighting.