Proof of concept of WebGL annotation service

Hi all,

I would like to present my PhD project from University of Queensland - Semantic annotation of 3D museum artefacts (3DSA). I had developed this proof of concept annotation prototype based on WebGL + O3D library, which it is possible to create point annotation / segment annotation (selection by user-defined region) to 3D object on the Web.

To keep in mind that this is a proof of concept built, it can be a bit unstable - might also because that I do not have any graphical programming background when I develop this, the truth is that I didn’t even do IT or math during my undergrads.

I highly suggest that people try out the low quality 3D object (65,000 triangles) before they move on to the high quality version (500,000 triangles), as the frontier is much more stable compare to the later ones. These 3D objects are digitized using a 3D laser scanner and stored as .ply format.

Currently, it works with Firefox and Chrome, had not tried Safari. IE will definitely fail.

Here is the link, please feel free to play around all the functionalities:

This is the project website that also have a link to the annotation prototype - there is also a troubleshooting page for the annotation prototype.
http://itee.uq.edu.au/~eresearch/projects/3dsa/

This prototype had also earned me an accepted paper to the ICADL 2011 conference, and I will be going to Beijing to present this paper, here is their website:
http://www.icadl2011.org/AcceptedPapers.shtml

I hope that my tiny contribution can deliver some encouragement to academics who wishes to explore WebGL standard for their project, that even people who don’t have 3D graphical background like me, can also make something out of it(although I do not wish to think again the learning process…:P).

My development had not stopped yet, as I’m going to include more useful functionality such as linking 3D annotations to museum documentation in HTML format, a lexicon to suggest useful terms for tagging, and also integrating the prototype with Drupal 7 for content management, search and security.

Ok, I had rant too much, anyway, do feel free to try out and report bugs if it happens. Hopefully that people in the community can appreciate what I had developed for a year.

P.S. if you didn’t see any annotations, simply because that no one had been tagging on it yet.

Appreciate the people who visited my project, but getting some feedback will be nice, so I can ensure that it is working for most of the people.

I know you posted this a long time ago, but impressive work!

Hey, thank you for your compliment. I am constantly including more features. Had open a visitor account so people don’t have to go through all the annoying registering process just to play around 3D annotations.

Currently I’m trying to include semantic annotations to the object, and it will take a while for me to create a huge list of terms. This project will be focusing in Greek vases and therefore my autocomplete interface can suggest some Greek pottery related terms.

Welcome more visitors, welcome more feedback. To keep in mind that this is only a research proof of concept prototype, bugs are expected to happen. But if anyone can report some issues or bugs, they will be highly appreciated and I will do my best to fix these bugs and improve the prototype.