WANT:
"Graphics Demo is a modified Commodore CBM 3032 computer. Its inner life was replaced by a mechanics. A wireframe model of a teapot, soldered out of silvered copper wire, is gimballed inside the monitor cabinet. The model is varnished with green uv-active paint and lighted by four blacklight tubes, which are installed invisible inside the cabinet. The teapot can be rotated in any direction by using the numeric keypad. During the rotation, you can hear the electric motors and feel their vibrations."
You must watch the video. The whirring noises are what really make it.
For reference: The Utah Teapot.
I must add whirring feedback sounds to mah comutah now.
Ahh, the clasic computer tea pot. I remember going down to the Boston Computer Museum and seeing that and going "WOW! That's so cool, it's 3D!". Of course that was actually rendered on the computer.
IIRC, it was either Battlestar Galactica or Buck Rogers that used this same technique to simulate wire-frame computer displays of enemy ships on their set.
I can't find a reference right now, but I believe all the wireframe computer displays in 2001 were physical wireframes.
I had thought all of the 2001 effects were done with cel animations... hmmm...
this is awesome stuff though. need.
I know they used that trick in Escape from New York.
That teapot has a bottom.
Someone should one-up them and do one with a solid teapot, you know, with like specular surfaces and stuff like that.
Of course, you'd have to gut a more powerful computer case to house that much processing power. There's no way a CBM could handle that.
Plus you'd need a totally different mounting system. Either very thin wires or acrylic. Really high-tech.
Either you didn't get it, or your acting like you didn't get it. I can't figure out which.
Mighty fuck, the teapot! At one time, the biggest running gag in CG. Almost every 3D package had a procedural teapot script hidden somewhere in it. It also of course used to be the test bed for lighting tests.
Somewhere in the last five years, with the advent of global illumination and light reconstruction it was tossed and replaced with a simple sphere (indicative of the same one used on set to shoot a gray/chrome ball light test)
God damn.
xscreensaver does not currently include any teapot gags. I keep meaning to do something about that.
show (Teapot gag.)
showpage
I'm already looking forward to a Stanford Bunny.
(paper version)
Pity the instruction text isn't rendered in the old Commodore font.
...Oops, is my geek showing?
so this is what comes after npr??