The Utah teapot has been the symbol of computer graphics. It was originally created by Martin Newell and went through a number of modifications over the years. Here, you can you can visualize and download any of these historical versions or customize it, using the settings above.

Versions of the Utah Teapot

The Utah Teapot has a number of versions that were developed and released over the years by different people from the University of Utah, as summarized below.

Version 1974 - Martin Newell

This is the original version created by Martin Newell, while he was a PhD student at the University of Utah, by approximately measuring an actual teapot. It is formed by 28 cubic Bezier patches, as the first computer graphics object modeled and rendered using a set of nonlinear surfaces, rather than a collection of polygons. Notably, Martin Newell's version has no bottom surface and it is taller than the commonly known shape of the famous Utah Teapot.

Martin Newell's original drawing of the Utah Teapot for modeling it by hand using graph paper.

Version 1975 - Jim Blinn

Jim Blinn, while he was a PhD student at the University of Utah, scaled Martin Newell's teapot model by 3/4 during a demo. He liked its new shape and kept it that way. Since 1975, this version of the teapot appeared in numerous publications, turning it into a symbol of computer graphics.

Jim Blinn in a reception honoring Ivan Sutherland at SIGGRAPH 2018, explaining why the Utah Teapot model is squished.

Version 1987 - Frank Crow

The most common version of Utah Teapot that appears in various modeling applications is the one released by Frank Crow, who was another PhD graduate of the University of Utah, in an IEEE article titled "The Origins of the Teapot." This article discusses the important role that the Utah Teapot model played in the early days of computer graphics and includes the control points of the scaled model by Jim Blinn. Except that all control points are shifted up just a bit to make room for a round bottom surface, defined by 4 additional Bezier patches. This brings the total number of patches to 32 and the total number of control points to 512.

Version 1992 - Hank Driskill

The handle and the spout patches of the original Utah Teapot model intersects with its body. This was necessary, as it was modeled using cubic Bezier patches. This was also a useful feature for testing various hidden surface removal algorithms that were being developed at the time, and their abilities in rendering intersecting surfaces. Also, because cubic Bezier patches cannot form perfectly circular shapes, the teapot's body was not perfectly round. Perhaps more importantly, it did not contain an interior and a rather visible gap around the lid.

In 1992, Hank Driskill, another PhD student at the University of Utah, addressed all these problems. He used the Alpha_1 software, which was being developed by Professors Elaine Cohen and Rich Riesenfeld and their students/collaborators, and he prepared a trimmed NURBS model of the Utah Teapot, connecting its perfectly round body to its handle and spout, and a new interior surface. Its bottom was flat, instead of the round bottom that was previously added by Frank Crow. Nonetheless, Hank Driskill's design, titled "Utah, the Next Generation," featuring this new Utah Teapot (with warp nacelles) won the SIGGRAPH 1992 T-Shirt Contest.

*Hank Driskill's version used a thick curve to cut a path through the spout. Here, we use the spout interior designed by Russ Fish instead.

The interior of this version was defined by revolving B-spline curves, resulting in 86 additional patches, so this version of the Utah Teapot has 118 patches in total.

Version 2006 - Russ Fish

The version by Hank Driskill was later improved by Russ Fish, a co-founder and technical lead of the Alpha_1 project at the University of Utah. Rush Fish modelled a new interior with a hallow knob for the lid and presented his "third-generation" teapot at SIGGRAPH 2006 with the title "Teapot Subdivision." He also released and documented this new and earlier versions of the Utah Teapot. In particular, his solution for generating the interior of the spout is elegant and closely follows the exterior contours prepared by Martin Newell. Similar to Hank Driskill's version, this one also has a flat bottom, rather than the round bottom of Frank Crow's version.

The "Teapot Subdivision" image generated by Russ Fish.

This version forms even more patches to model the interior, resulting in 134 patches in total.

Version 2025 - Cem Yuksel

The latest version of Utah Teapot is prepared by Prof. Cem Yuksel of the University of Utah. This version uses much fewer patches for modeling the Teapot's interior. Though it closely follows Hank Driskill's interior shape, it contains a solid knob for the lid. The spout interior is also slightly modified to ensure that the surface normals are continuous where the tip of the spout meets the interior surface. The new interior design works with both the round bottom of Frank Crow's model and the flat bottom used by Hank Driskill and Russ Fish, but the official version has a round bottom.

In addition, this latest version also includes a minor modification to the exterior surface of the Utah Teapot in the form of small chamfers where the spout and the handle meet the Teapot's body, ensuring that the teapot's surface normal is continuous over the exterior surface.

The lightweight interior model of this version only needs 30 additional patches, so the resulting teapot has 62 patches in total.