For decades, 3D computer graphics researchers and developers have used this cute model of a teapot. It's a classic! The back story is that Martin Newell, the famous computer graphics pioneer and researcher, needed a model for his work, and his wife suggested that he model their teapot at home. The original is now on display at the Boston Computer Museum. We have included an OBJ version of this classic model with the downloadable files for this book.

Of course, you can choose your own OBJ file, but if you want to use the teapot, locate the teapot.obj file, and copy it to the res/raw folder (create the folder if necessary).

Now load the model and try it. In MainActivity, add a variable at the top of the MainActivity class to hold the current model:

    Transform model;

Add the following code to the setup method. Notice that we're scaling it to a fraction of the original size and placing it 3 units in front of the camera:

    public void setup() {
        ModelObject modelObj = new ModelObject(R.raw.teapot);
        float scalar = modelObj.normalScalar();
        model = new Transform()
                .setLocalPosition(0, 0, -3)
                .setLocalScale(scalar, scalar, scalar)
                .addComponent(modelObj);
    }

Run the project, and it should look like this:

You can see that the model was successfully loaded and rendered. Unfortunately, the shading is difficult to discern. To get a better view of the shaded teapot, let's shift it down a bit. Modify the setLocalPosition method in setup, as follows:

                .setLocalPosition(0, -2, -3) 

The following screenshot is cropped and enlarged, so you can see the shaded teapot here similar to the way you'd see it in the Cardboard viewer: