3D meta model generation with application in 3D object retrieval

In the application of 3D object retrieval we search for 3D objects similar to a given query object. When a user searches for a certain class of objects like 'planes' the results can be unsatisfying: Many object variations are possible for a single class and not all of them are covered with one or a few example objects. We propose a meta model representation which corresponds to a procedural model with meta-parameters. Changing the meta-parameters leads to different variations of a 3D object. For the meta model generation a single object is constructed with a modeling tool. We automatically extract a procedural representation of the object. By inserting meta-parameters we generate our meta model. The meta model defines a whole object class. The user can choose a meta model and search for all objects similar to any instance of the meta model to retrieve all objects of a certain class from a 3D object database. We show that the retrieval precision is significantly improved using the meta model as retrieval query.