thumb|Screenshot of the dancing baby
The "Dancing Baby", also called "Baby Cha-Cha" or "the Oogachacka Baby", is an internet meme of a 3D-rendered animation of a baby performing a cha-cha type dance. It quickly became a media phenomenon in the United States and one of the first viral videos in 1996.
Origin
The original baby model file, Viewpoint Datalab's commercially available "Toddler with Diaper" Model #5653, was distributed in Character Studio, a plug-in for the Autodesk 3ds Max application (known as "3D Studio Max" at the time) from a division of Autodesk, Kinetix.
Robert Lurye, who was animating at Rhythm and Hues Studios, was hired by the software company Unreal Pictures and told to make more samples for their animation program prototype, the future Character Studio. Lurye started changing the choreography of a dancing adult skeleton that had been made by the team (the "chacha.bip" file). He added more dance moves, such as making it "play air guitar for a second and bend over and shake its shoulders." Team member John Chadwick, by using the Physique software, made the baby model perform the skeleton's dance. He stated that it was his idea to load the dancing animation on the baby. Vulture reports that the animation was also developed by Paul Bloemink, John Hutchinson and Adam Felt.
The result was a file with the name "sk_baby.max". He also reportedly sent the Dancing Baby to his colleagues by e-mail. Although Girard credits Lussier as being responsible for the meme's spread,
Before becoming an art director for Nine Inch Nails, Rob Sheridan shared that in April 1997, when he was 17, he contributed to the meme's early fame and ran a “Dancing Baby” fan site known as "The Unofficial Dancing Baby Homepage" where users could submit their own variations and Sheridan posting them on the site. A popular variation contained the song "Hooked on a Feeling" by Blue Swede, hence the name "Oogachacka Baby", propelling the meme to viral status between 1997–1998. In 1998, Sheridan was interviewed by news outlets about his website.