Lighting Confusion

I am having problems with using lighting. I am drawing a simple 3x3 image that is 3-dimensional. I have successfully drawn it as a wireframe object but when I try to draw it as GL_POLYGON I get a bright white object. I have a sample program that my friend gave me that successfully lights an icosahedron in another program. He said I could use his lighting method in my program to draw the image. Unfortunately, his lighting produces this bright white object for me. Here is what I do to do my lighting:

In an init function:

    mat_specular[0] = 1.0;
   mat_specular[1] = 1.0;
   mat_specular[2] = 1.0;
   mat_specular[3] = 0.15;
   mat_shininess[0] = 50.0;
   mat_solid[0] = 0.75;
   mat_solid[1] = 0.75;
   mat_solid[2] = 0.0;
   mat_solid[3] = 1.0;
			/* These are properties of light. */
   position[0] = 10.0;
   position[1] = 10.0;
   position[2] = 5.0;
   position[3] = 0.0;
   light_diffuse[0] = 1.0;
   light_diffuse[1] = 1.0;
   light_diffuse[2] = 1.0;
   light_diffuse[3] = 1.0;
   light_specular[0] = 1.0;
   light_specular[1] = 1.0;
   light_specular[2] = 1.0;
   light_specular[3] = 1.0;

   glMaterialfv( GL_FRONT, GL_DIFFUSE, mat_solid );
   glMaterialfv( GL_FRONT, GL_SPECULAR, mat_specular );
   glMaterialfv( GL_FRONT, GL_SHININESS, mat_shininess );

   glLightfv( GL_LIGHT0, GL_POSITION, position );
   glLightfv( GL_LIGHT0, GL_DIFFUSE, light_diffuse );
   glLightfv( GL_LIGHT0, GL_SPECULAR, light_specular );

   glEnable( GL_LIGHTING );
   glEnable( GL_LIGHT0 );
   glEnable( GL_DEPTH_TEST );
   glEnable( GL_NORMALIZE );
   //glEnable( GL_CULL_FACE );

   glFrontFace(GL_CW); 

When I draw my polygons, I do this:

                calcNormal( v, normal );
               glBegin( GL_POLYGON );
                  glNormal3fv( normal );
                  glVertex3fv( v[0] );
                  glVertex3fv( v[1] );
                  glVertex3fv( v[2] );
               glEnd( ); 

This code is in a loop to draw multiple polygons. Why am I getting bright white objects all the time and not a shaded yellow-ish object like in my sample program. The sample program did not color the polygons at any time. Thanks for your help!!!

Well start with
glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT_AND_BACK, GL_DIFFUSE, mat_solid );

and see if that works? If so you are rendering the back side of your polygons. Just a thought off the top of my head…

That didn’t help any. It is still just a bright white object. Does it appear something is being done incorrectly? Thanks!

What happens if you set specular contribution of light to zero? Do you use textures?

Actually, my problem seems to have come that I initialized my lighting before creating my window. Now that I create my window first and then initialize everything, it appears to be lighting properly. Any idea why this would be that way though? Thanks!

The OGL functions needs valid OGL context. Otherwise they do not work.