A VISUALIZATION METHOD TO FIND SYMMETRIC PORTIONS OF 3D MODELS USING COLORED SPHERES

摘要

The use of 3D models is gaining wide popularity on the Internet, and the number of 3D model databases is increasing rapidly. Search methods to handle these 3D model databases efficiently have been investigated extensively. When large 3D model databases are queried for a similarity search, the system returns a large number of outputs, especially when the system searches for 3D models which contain partially similar portions. This is the case because 3D models consist of a huge number of polygonal pieces, and there are more chances to obtain a query match. Thus, users have to browse a large number of output result pages which is a tedious operation. Therefore, we propose different browsing methods for visualization which use a 3D graphical user interface to view search results without a time consuming page to page browsing operation. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis and colored sphere representations were used to visualize the similarity search results. The methods help users to evaluate or recognize similar portions of 3D models.