Early experiences with a 3D model search engine

New acquisition and modeling tools make it easier to create 3D models, and affordable and powerful graphics hardware makes it easier to use them. As a result, the number of 3D models available on the web is increasing rapidly. How-ever, it is still not as easy to find 3D models as it is to find, for example, text documents and images. What is needed is a "3D model search engine," a specialized search engine that targets 3D models. We created a prototype 3D model search engine to investigate the design and implementation issues. Our search engine can be partitioned into three main components: (1) acquisition: 3D models have to be collected from the web, (2) analysis: they have to be analyzed for later matching, and (3) query processing and matching: an online system has to match user queries to the collected 3D models. Our site currently indexes over 36,000 models, of which about 31,000 are freely available. In addition to a text search interface, it offers several 3D and 2D shape-based query interfaces. Since it went online one year ago (in November 2001), it has processed over 148,000 searches from 37,800 hosts in 103 different countries. Currently 20-25% of the about 1,000 visitors per week are returning users. This paper reports on our initial experiences designing, building, and running the 3D model search engine.