On Volume Distribution Features Based 3D Model Retrieval

In this paper, a 3D mesh retrieval method is proposed based on extracting geometric features of models. The method first finds three principal directions for a model by employing the principal component analysis method, and rotates the model to align it in a reference frame. Then, three sets of planes are used to slice the model along to the directions respectively. Subsequently, three character curves of the model can be obtained and be used as descriptor to key the model in 3D mesh model library. By comparing descriptors of two models, our method can compute similarity of models. Experiences show that our method is rapid, stable and robust to deal with various mesh models with arbitrary geometric and topological complexity.