Finding Virtual Neighbors in 3D Blog with 3D Viewpoint Similarity

We propose a new mechanism for viewing entries of the 3D Blog system that enables users to find “virtual neighbors” who may have similar interests. The 3D Blog system allows a user to interact with a 3D model, annotate any spot on the model, and publish the annotations in a blog so that the user can easily communicate with other people and share interests and idea about 3D models of interest to the user. Since each annotation is saved as a blog entry with 3D viewpoint information, i.e., the user’s viewpoint and view direction as well as 3D information on annotated points, the system can detect similar entries using similarity of the 3D viewpoint information. Users can easily and intuitively compare the similar entries using the “playback” function which renders the 3D scene in the similar entries.