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Utah Teapot

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Here are these models in interactive WebGL:

The classic Utah Teapot.

http://clara.io/player/8d9a8181-f1ce-4340-b24f-e36bbaf318f7

Blender's Suzanne:

http://clara.io/player/fdcbe819-ec7d-4468-99c0-3cc34ede9782

The Stanford Bunny:

http://clara.io/player/616bf87b-c7f2-4925-b0d5-688069aee331

To start editing these (or change the material, even render it via V-Ray, or export as STL) in your browser, just click the "Edit" button in the top left.

More info:

http://www.cs.utah.edu/gdc/projects/alpha1/help/man/html/mod...

> The way I got the story (this was even before my time as a grad student at Utah) the original teapot was modeled by Martin Newell and rendered by Jim Blinn in 1974 or early 1975. The Utah Teapot was the first computer graphics object to be designed and rendered as sculptured surfaces, rather than as a set of polygons. The design program which was used to create it used bicubic Bezier patches as a representation, and used a Tektronix storage tube connected to a DEC PDP-10. Position continuity between Bezier patches was maintained by keeping control points on the edges of adjacent 4 x 4 patch control meshes in the same place. Tangent continuity between patches was maintained by keeping the control mesh links adjoining adjacent edges collinear. I don't know how the radial and bilateral symmetries were maintained.

(You can find more interesting info there as well)

I've actually used a derivative of the software alpha_1, at Utah while I was a high school program at the U. I actually used it to create a model of Escher's Belvedere, IIRC using NURBs for the dome.

In the same vein: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna

See, also, the Stanford Bunny:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_Bunny

List of common 3D test models:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_3D_test_models

Blender uses a low-poly monkey for a placeholder, called Suzanne.

Producer Tommy Trash released a single called "Monkey in Love" with this cover art:

http://i1.sndcdn.com/artworks-000053576235-yu7a6g-original.j...

Hmm... that looks familiar. Let me just check:

http://williamgoldie.com/imghost/suzanne.png

Yep. Looks like the artist just made a glass material and rendered Blender's built-in model. I've surprisingly been unable to find any discussion of this on the web.

If you find yourself in Silicon Valley, you can see the original Utah teapot at the Computer History Museum. They have an incredible collection of artifacts from the beginnings of the computing age.

Is the Utah Teapot the 3D version of `helloworld` ?

I don't think it's commonly made by beginner modelers the way helloworld is with programmers. As I understand it, the teapot is more so useful as a pre-built model which you can use to test out different textures, materials, and shaders. It's not too complicated of a shape, but it has curves and flat areas more simple geometry doesn't have.

It's the "hello world" for people writing rendering software.

I'd say it's more like the "Lorem ipsum" [0] of rendering. It's usually just a convenient placeholder to test things out on.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum

I thought it was neat that the OpenGL Utility Toolkit (GLUT) has a built-in glutSolidTeapot function for drawing the teapot.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/OpenGL_Programming/Basics/2DObj...

I don't think they are done until you can 3D print it back into reality from the virtual model.

It's been done: http://www.flickriver.com/photos/creative_tools/4454791986/

Does that photo have a slight illusory motion to it?

don't forget Suzanne http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)#Suzanne

Here are more of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Test_items

Pixar also hands out a Renderman Teapot every year during the Renderman Users' Group at SIGGRAPH.

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