3D model matching based on silhouette image matching

Recently a lot of 3D models have been created and stored because of the great demand in CG animation productions and 3D game productions. In this situation, we need the 3D model database system that allows us to retrieve required models easily and accurately. So the authors have been studying 3D model database systems. The main questions are that what is the best feature as the similarity measure among 3D models and what is the best way to specify the query. In this paper, the authors propose the silhouette image matching as the answer of the first question and the hand sketch image as the answer of the second question. The authors have developed a 3D model database system using the silhouette image matching as the similarity measure, and it accepts the hand sketch image as the query. This paper proposes such a database system and describes its availability showing its evaluation results.