Metadata enhanced 3D content search for real-time visualization of 3D digital assets

This paper presents a virtual 3D repository that incorporates user activity to its content selection procedures, in order to deliver personalized results on a real-time basis. This is achieved by embedding a metadata-based search engine to the repository interface in order to facilitate object discovery. This search mechanism takes advantage of the rich metadata describing the 3D content stored in our repository. Several algorithms are used to extract information from the metadata files in order to provide the search options, as well as the information resulting from the user selections. The main challenges we have to address concern the algorithmic efficiency, as well as the relevance of results related to user requirements.