Software Platform for 3D Model Conversion and Management

Abstract

In any industry, if a business promotes its products to the right people in the correct manner, it becomes the leader in that industry. Marketing has evolved over the years as the technology becomes better and better. Over the years, marketing was done in the form of door to door sales to billboards and then on electronic media. Now we are in the golden age of technology, where marketing as well as planning can be done in the form of Augmented Reality. Architects can measure and create layout plans of the space using Augmented Reality or people can select furniture by placing them in their living rooms and looking from all sides to see if it is a perfect match. Having an Augmented Reality app is not a straightforward task. Every major field of science uses different 3D file formats to create and manage their 3D models. Using those 3D models in an Augmented Reality may not be possible as the underlying Augmented Reality frameworks may not read those formats. Adding runtime 3D models to Augmented reality applications is also a major challenge. In this thesis, a software as a service (SaaS) solution is developed that addresses some of the issues related to Augmented reality applications. These issues are converting different 3D file formats to a single 3D file format that can be used in Augmented Reality applications and that 3D file format can also be rendered at runtime. This thesis presents the development process of a software platform where three different applications, a user interface, a 3D model editor and viewer, and a backend application, are developed. The details of the inner functionalities of each application with future work and potential improvements of the platform are also discussed.