How a Teapot Revolutionized Computer Graphics

Once upon a time, the field of computer graphics was just getting started, and a simple teapot helped researchers develop rendering techniques.

[panchitoeljc]

was the sound of this video recorded with a teapot?

[SwitchAndLever]

The reason why the teapot is squashed is not because it "looked better" but rather that it was displayed on an early system with non-square pixels, and so to make it appear correct on screen the dataset had to be scaled along the Z-axis by a factor of about 1.3. This version was later distributed widely, and once displayed on a system with square pixels (such as pretty much any computer since the mid '80s) the teapot will appear squashed.

[BHF]

This is correct. Everytime I need to test a material or reflections on an object, I always use a teapot. It's just so handy

[shannoncrescent]

I've always wondered about why I saw that same teapot in so many early 3d animation demos! Thanks for solving that mystery for me :)

[knocknockify]

Watching your old videos, I'm glad you have a good microphone now

[joserenezapata]

The teapot also appears in the "3d pipes" screensaver if you wait long enough (approx. 15 minutes) and then it starts appearing more often

[Squirmish]

Great video except for the crappy microphone

[gentuxable]

HTTP 418 "I'm a teapot"

[Garfield_Minecraft]

0:21 is that tesseract? shadow of 4th dimensional object

[ieatcrayons]

2:12 explain: how did he manage to get such lucious hair, even though he's bald? asking for a friend.

[lawrencedoliveiro]

0:30 The famous Cornell Box, a popular benchmark for testing the accuracy of your physically-based renderer.

[wendyleeconnelly]

i loved the teapots. I did sort of wonder why there weren't also faucets.

[kirbymarchbarcena]

Teapotahedron...now that's one shape you'll never learn from your math teacher.

[heinzk]

At 0:59 it says, that it was a Melitta teapot, but the manufacturer is Friesland Porzellan. Both are German companies, and that's pretty much all we Germans contributed to computer graphics technology :-)

[Meow_YT]

Shouldn't new algorithms be measured in Teapots / second ?

[beastbro]

huh. ive never seen this for a render test, but when i was trying out a 3d mouse for CAD the model they had you control in the tutorial for the mouse was this

[SomeRandomPiggo]

0:07 Look at when the old pc appears, wtf it has blue pixels being replaced with the image??? And at 0:48 the third image does the same 🤔🤔🤔

[VectorJW]

Is the teapot in the museum the same one that Newell had?

[joseanl]

huh, always wondered why everyone used de the darn teapot...

Useful day it is then, since y learned a new thing!!

[spoooderminlovesdolantrump]

Read about this is my calc 3 book a few years ago