Mr. Newell's Teapot

The Utah teapot is a 3D model of an ordinary Melitta teapot created by Martin Newell in 1975. He is one of the pioneers of computer graphics and used it for his research into 3D rendering. This digital teapot is probably one of the most famous 3D models in the world, at least for people working in computer graphics. Even V-Ray uses it as its render icon.

Although the teapot was created using Bézier patches, it is now much easier to download it as a tessellated OBJ model. I have a fondness for such icons of computer graphics history, so I decided to rebuild it in Rhino3D. The existing surfaces had to be recreated as closely and cleanly as possible using NURBS. Once that was done, I made a few changes. The original model is not a closed volume. It has no interior surfaces and the lid does not even fit into the pot. So I added all the inner contours and a support for the lid to rest on, as well as fillets between the parts.

I am well aware that this has been done by countless people before. My aim was to get as close to the original model as possible, with smooth surfaces and a clean 3D volume. I will use it for experiments in rendering and physics simulation.