[info] smartmachines: 3d model geometric search engine

[Alejandro Dubrovsky]

(
http://smart-machines.blogspot.com/2007/12/3d-search-engine.html
demo video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_oHZX84doU
)

3D search engine

Saturday, December 15, 2007 at 1:17 PM Posted by Awesom-o

A very cool project from the Shape Retrieval and Analysis group at
Princeton involves the creation of a 3D-model search engine; queries to
the engine can be keywords but also a hand drawn outline of the object
to search for. The researchers have constructed a database of 36000 3D
models and have developed a JAVA application that allows users to try
out the system over the web. The image below shows an example query and
the results returned for a 2D outline of a car.

3D search engine
One of the major problems that the team is trying to solve is
discovering an efficient representation for 3D shape so that different
objects can easily be identified. Some representations can be too
general; for example, we can represent a human head and a soccer ball
using a sphere but it would be hard to distinguish between the two
unless more elements of the shape of each object are taken into account,
i.e., the facial characteristics of humans can help differentiate a head
from a ball. In addition, a model that is too specific will not be good
for recognizing objects in a large database; for example, we would like
to discover the features that make a car easy to recognize (a general
class of objects) as opposed to a specific model, i.e., an SUV versus a
sports car.

The following video provides an overview of how the 3D search engine
works and how it can help find items that cannot be easily searched for
using keywords only.


The 3D model search engine allows anyone to upload a 3D model of an
object in order to help make it better. So, if you have some 3D models
lying around, you can (and should) help the Princeton researchers
improve their search engine.