I translate my object(soccer ball) -20z pixels away from the camera, keep the camera and rotating sphere(blue sphere=light, so you know where the light is) at origin, and rotate the light(represented by the sphere) around the origin to simulate moving light.

I think this short video(00:14) should clear things up:

*note: blue sphere=light, soccer ball=object, grey plane=flat ground

[media]

Why is my object acting as if it is at the origin, where the light is rotating around, but in reality it is -20z further away from the origin?

main function:

void drawScene() {
    glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT);
 
    glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW);
    glLoadIdentity();
 
 
 
    //lighting+sphere
    rot+=1.0f;
    glPushMatrix();
 
    //glTranslatef(0.0f, 0.0f, -20.0f);
    glRotatef(rot,0.0f,1.0f,0.0);
    glTranslatef(0.0f, 0.0f, 10.0f);
 
    initSceneLighting();//set position light[0] {0,0,0,1}
    drawSceneSphereLight();//blue sphere
    glPopMatrix();
 
    //soccer ball(object)
    glPushMatrix();
    glTranslatef(0.0f, 0.0f, -20.0f);
 
    glColor3f(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f);
    glCallList(soccerBall);
    glPopMatrix();
 
 
    //floor
    glPushMatrix();
 
    glColor3f(0.5f,0.5f,0.4f);
    drawSceneFloor();//grey ground
 
    glPopMatrix();
?
 
    glutSwapBuffers();
}

Solved.

Solved.

YAY!

Care to elaborate?

There was actually a dot product error in my shader program, which made the lighting go hairwire. :)