Photorealistic Utah Teapot

The Utah Teapot is a famous test model used extensively in 3D graphics, animation, and games. It has an interesting history that I briefly talk about, and I apologize for the joke, but I hope it gave a good laugh!

More history in the Wikipedia article:

The manufacturer (not sponsored):

[..]

"Whoa, it's even tracking the blur of the camera, and applying blur to the model to compensate, so clever!"
...
"AH DAMMIT!"

[NoahHornberger]

I worked as a shading TD at pixar for a year and this fooled me. I was expecting the hand to go behind the pot

[KomoliRihyoh]

ngl my brain lagged a bit when you picked it up since i was so convinced it was a render

[sticklyboi]

then the teapot became hyperrealistic and bled from the eyes

[Nugcon]

This is the type of video that gets recomended to people 4 years later.

[fuzzypotatoo]

You know whats weird is when the teapot first popped out in the video, my mind was like, “that’s not very realistic.”

[KuraSourTakanHour]

Honestly, I thought the teapot at the beginning was a simulation until a few seconds of other clues. After seeing so much progress in graphics and physics rendering, I'm not sure anymore

[reagame]

Woah! That’s awesome! I wonder how his hand is going to-

Oh.

[craftedminedude]

That's not how you use a teapot... A kettle pours hot water, a teapot pours hot tea

[chipio]

"They never modelled the bottom, so it would've made a big mess." I expected you to lift up the teapot off of the counter and have everything rush out

[Leaked-kezv]

Heh that teapot doesn't look realistic you didn't fool me!






wait it's real

[DFsdfd]

its funny
when i saw the intro i was thinking to myself "its cool but it doesn't look completely realistic"
boy do i feel stupid now

[MizManFryingP]

"Whoa that's so real!"
"They must've used a custom made HDRI of the room for this"
"It has motion blur with the camera?? Insane!"
"Wait his hand casts shadows on the teapot???"

"Oh"

[CrayRT]

I can just imagine a person 3d printing that model of the teapot without knowing it has no bottom

[fredricknoe]

Me:Were those graphics really that good?

Code parade: Well yes but actually no.

[justinknew]

the fact that you wouldn't know if this is simulated shows how far technology has come

[asdfasdf-ddlk]

I'm literally shaking right now, what a heinous disregard for proper tea-pouring practice, it hurts my poor little British soul.


In all seriousness though, I didn't know about the Teapot before, that's actually pretty cool. :)

[Architector_]

Okay, the start joke got me good.
How did you do the steamless stitching of the shot without and the shot with the teapot? In other words, how did you make it pop into a scene like the software took a second to find the trackpoints?

[thebrd]

Legend has it that the squish came from transcribing coordinates from a display with non-square aspect ratio.

[SleepyHarryZzz]

It's a teapot, not a hotwaterpot! I'm genuinely shocked by this video. Reported.