3D search engine

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.


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.