  View-based indexing schemes for 3D object retrieval are gaining popularity
since they provide good retrieval results. These schemes are coherent with the
theory that humans recognize objects based on their 2D appearances. The
viewbased techniques also allow users to search with various queries such as
binary images, range images and even 2D sketches. The previous view-based
techniques use classical 2D shape descriptors such as Fourier invariants,
Zernike moments, Scale Invariant Feature Transform-based local features and 2D
Digital Fourier Transform coefficients. These methods describe each object
independent of others. In this work, we explore data driven subspace models,
such as Principal Component Analysis, Independent Component Analysis and
Nonnegative Matrix Factorization to describe the shape information of the
views. We treat the depth images obtained from various points of the view
sphere as 2D intensity images and train a subspace to extract the inherent
structure of the views within a database. We also show the benefit of
categorizing shapes according to their eigenvalue spread. Both the shape
categorization and data-driven feature set conjectures are tested on the PSB
database and compared with the competitor view-based 3D shape retrieval
algorithms
