DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
This action is in response to the Amendment filed on 9/13/2025.
Claims 1, 3-6, 8-9, 11-14, 16-17, 19-22, 24 are pending. Claims 1, 9, 17 have been amended. Claim 2, 7, 10, 15, 18, 23 has been cancelled.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claim(s) 1, 3-6, 8-9, 11-14, 16-17, 19-22 and 24 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Roimela et al. ( US 20210383590 A1, hereinafter Roimela) in view of Jenkins (US 20150269770 A1), in view of Zhou et al. (US 7224356 B2, hereinafter Zhou).
Regarding Claim 9, Roimela teaches an apparatus (Roimela, Fig. 15, Element) 1500 apparatus) comprising:
a non-transitory memory for storing an application (Roimela, Paragraph [0264], non-transitory program storage device readable by a machine), the application for:
generating patches from dynamic mesh information (Roimela, Paragraph [0063], [0127], The multi view encoding description 1200 is made up of several components… provided to texture patch generation… geometry patch generation it may be beneficial to signal geometry as a mesh for individual patches); and
packing the patches on a texture atlas using orthographic projections (Roimela, Paragraph [0127], [0228], Texture patch generation 1202 provides one or more results to packing 1208 via 1222, and geometry patch generation… Packing 1208 provides a result to atlas encoder… averaged orthogonal projections may cover the scene in the base layer, with the detail layer(s) providing view-dependent details specific to different viewing directions and/or locations);
wherein generating the patches from dynamic mesh information (Roimela, Paragraph [0063], [0127], The multi view encoding description 1200 is made up of several components… provided to texture patch generation… geometry patch generation it may be beneficial to signal geometry as a mesh for individual patches); further comprises:
[[ wherein generating the patches from dynamic mesh information further generating a list of adjacent triangles; calculating triangle properties; adding neighboring triangles;
, wherein a neighboring triangle is added to the list of adjacent triangles when a number of triangles in the list is less than a threshold and when an angle between a last inserted normal and a current normal is smaller than a second threshold; checking for vertex occlusion; and checking for surface occlusion;]]
merging the patches based on a calculated cost (Roimela, Paragraph [0063], certain patches may contain uniform values <read on calculated cost> for color data…to signal smaller patches inside larger patches, provided that the larger patch contains the same or visually similar data as the smaller patch),
wherein the calculated cost is based on a perimeter of the patches and an ortho stretch value (Roimela, Paragraph [0063], signaling uniform values … may be equally valid… patch merging, where in some cases it may be possible to signal smaller patches inside larger patches [0027], Such data describes geometry (shape, size, position in 3D-space) and respective attributes (e.g. color, opacity, reflectance, etc.), plus any possible temporal changes of the geometry and attributes at given time instances [0039], each NAL unit can be preceded by an additional element that specifies the size of the NAL unit. [0165], If volume texture is encoded as a separate track, the size of volume <read on ortho stretch value> texture slices are defined. This indicates how the volume texture is packed in a video frame).
and a processor coupled to the memory, the processor configured for processing the application (Roimela, Paragraph [0231], The apparatus 1500 comprises a processor 1502, at least one non-transitory or transitory memory 1504 including computer program code 1505, wherein the at least one memory 1504 and the computer program code 1505 are configured to, with the at least one processor 1502, cause the apparatus 1500 to implement a process, component, module, or function).
Roimela does not explicitly disclose but Jenkis teaches generating a list of adjacent triangles (Jenkins, Paragraph [1433], The difference shaft is constructed for adjacent triangles using a simple process) ;
calculating triangle properties (Jenkins, Paragraph [0658], , the angle between the current swept triangle candidate TRIANGLE and the CURRENT_POLYGON (supporting polygon) incident on MV is measured.) ;
adding neighboring triangles (Jenkins, Paragraph [0863], The corresponding 3D traversal of a triangle mesh (detailed in the discussion of FIGS. 20A-20W) can occur across one of three neighboring boundaries);
[[ wherein a neighboring triangle is ]] added to the list of adjacent triangles (Jenkins, Fig. 12, Step 1215, 1220-2093, “Place wedges in wedge_list” “First wedge in wedge_list”, “Next wedge in wedge_list”) [[ when a number of triangles in the list is less than a threshold and when an angle between a last inserted normal and a current normal is smaller than a second threshold ]]
checking for vertex occlusion (Jenkins, Paragraph [0507], the backprojection method is applied to a mesh silhouette edge only if the corresponding supporting viewcell vertex (SVV) is occluded from the mesh silhouette edge, as indicated by an occlusion of the 2D shaft between these two structures) ;
and checking for surface occlusion (Jenkins, Paragraph [0408], The effective occlusion of a region is a ratio reflecting the number and surface area polygons occluded in an occlusion region divided by the additional geometry created during the remeshing caused by the region).
Jenkins and Roimela are analogous since both of them are dealing with meshes of volumetric data. Roimela provided a way of dynamically process mesh based on orthogonal projection associated with patch on triangle meshes.
Jenkins provided a way of handling dynamic adjust mesh by using triangle mesh relationship. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention was made to incorporate triangle mesh relationship taught by Jenkins into modified invention off Roimela such that when dealing with patches of texture atlas using orthographic projection, system will be able to efficiently and accurately adjust the memory usage which provide better adaptability in real-time performance while reducing the computational demand lead to higher suitable 3D volumetric data handling.
The combination does not explicitly disclose but Zhou teaches wherein a neighboring triangle is added to the list of adjacent triangles (Zhou, Column 7, Line 33-55, Column 8, Line 19-21, “Partition the mesh into m parts by growing charts simultaneously around the representatives using the geodesic distance… the geodesic distance from a triangle to a representative vertex is computed as the average of the geodesic distances of the triangle's three vertices to the representative”; “definition of "capacity" between the two adjacent triangles of the mesh f, and ½ is defined”) when a number of triangles in the list is less than a threshold (Zhou, Column 7, Line 42-45, “The present implementation also restricts n<=10 (see the section titled "Implementation Details"), which in turn restricts the maximum number of sub-chart”) and when an angle between a last inserted normal and a current normal is smaller than a second threshold (Zhou, Column 7, Line 62-64, “minimize various measures of chart compactness while choosing chart cuts of shortest length or along edges having high dihedral angle” Column 8, Line 33-35, “aij is the angle between normals of the triangles fi and fj” <read on angle between triangle normal>).
Zhou and Roimela are analogous since both of them are dealing with forming packing mesh-derived patches/charts into a texture atlas for 3D surfaces.
Roimela provided a way of generating patches and packing them using orthographic projections in an encoding pipeline.
Zhou provided a way of growing charts by adding neighboring triangles under size and angle/quality constraints with explicit angle-between-normals calculation.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention was made to incorporate threshold-based neighbor admission during chart growth by Zhou into modified invention off Roimela such that system will be able to adjust the result based on list size, normal and angle threshold which will reduce distortion and maintain compact, stable boundaries while controlling patch growth size in order to create best representation of meshes of 3D Volumetric data.
Regarding Claim 11, The combination of Roimela, Jenkins and Zhou teaches the invention in Claim 9.
The combination further teaches wherein generating the list of adjacent triangles comprises adding triangles that share a vertex with a triangle to the list (Jenkins, Paragraph [0721], a swept triangle (a SE-MV supporting polygon) on the inside corner vertex shared by first-order silhouette edges labeled A and B).
As explained in rejection of claim 10, the obviousness for combining of triangle mesh handling of Jenkins into Roimela is provided above.
Regarding Claim 12, The combination of Roimela, Jenkins and Zhou teaches the invention in Claim 9.
The combination further teaches wherein generating the list of adjacent triangles comprises adding triangles that share an edge with a triangle to the list (Jenkins, Paragraph [1436], This process allows a simple and efficient construction of the difference shaft of two adjacent triangles by reversing the SV-ME (previously constructed) supporting polygon of the shared edge).
As explained in rejection of claim 10, the obviousness for combining of triangle mesh handling of Jenkins into Roimela is provided above.
Regarding Claim 13, The combination of Roimela, Jenkins and Zhou teaches the invention in Claim 9.
The combination further teaches wherein calculating the triangle properties comprises calculating a normal and a surface area of each triangle (Jenkins, Paragraph [0457], construct the supporting polygon incident on the edge by pivoting from the edge, in the direction of the normal of the backfacing component triangle. [0448], the actual sweep operation which constructs the swept triangles and the corresponding SE-MV wedges that form a continuous visibility event surface (first-order umbral event surface) which connects the SV-ME wedges from the adjacent first-order mesh silhouette edges).
As explained in rejection of claim 10, the obviousness for combining of triangle mesh handling of Jenkins into Roimela is provided above.
Regarding Claim 14, The combination of Roimela, Jenkins and Zhou teaches the invention in Claim 9.
The combination further teaches wherein the application is further configured for selecting a seed triangle (Jenkins, Paragraph [0225], runtime 3D mesh traversal process to construct ROI from pre-stored labeled silhouette contour information and a list of seed triangles for the connected components of the ROI)
whose normal is most aligned with a most frequent orientation that has not been added to a patch (Jenkins, Paragraph [0596], [1124], the ECFVF employed is constructed to be axis-aligned with the viewcell (e.g., viewport edges are parallel to the y and x axes for example)…Each edge, being on the boundary of a polygon mesh, has a natural orientation in which one normal to the edge is facing outside the polyhedron (outfacing normal) and the opposite normal is facing inside the polyhedron).
As explained in rejection of claim 10, the obviousness for combining of triangle mesh handling of Jenkins into Roimela is provided above.
Regarding Claim 16, The combination of Roimela, Jenkins and Zhou teaches the invention in Claim 9.
Roimela further teaches wherein packing the patches on the texture atlas using orthographic projections comprises implementing (Roimela, Paragraph [0127], [0228], Texture patch generation 1202 provides one or more results to packing 1208 via 1222, and geometry patch generation… Packing 1208 provides a result to atlas encoder… averaged orthogonal projections may cover the scene in the base layer, with the detail layer(s) providing view-dependent details specific to different viewing directions and/or locations)
frame scaling (Roimela, Paragraph [0063], Examples of application include i) down sampling flat geometries, where in certain conditions scaling down patches representing flat geometries… it may be beneficial to signal geometry as a mesh for individual patches, thus being able to remove patches from the geometry frame should be considered),
patch orientation (Roimela, Paragraph [0199], view-dependent delivery where the client is sent some subset of the full scene data relevant to the current view position, orientation, or other parameters. [0201], view optimization is defined to mean the overall process of splitting the scene into scene nodes, and segmenting the content visible to each scene node into views and patches).
Roimela does not explicitly disclose but Jenkins teaches and temporal stabilization (Jenkins, Paragraph [1152], [1573], the viewer's visual acuity and also tend to occur during periods of low temporal visibility coherence which increases the possibility of late packet arrival. By using lower LOD packets under these conditions, step 2097A can help prevent late packet arrival…the method realizes an efficient visibility-based codec for streaming delivery of interactive content via local or remote server. The codec exploits the intrinsic dynamic or temporal visibility coherence of interactive walkthroughs to minimize the required bandwidth for on-demand streaming).
Jenkins and Roimela are analogous since both of them are dealing with meshes of volumetric data. Roimela provided a way of dynamically process mesh based on orthogonal projection associated with patch on triangle meshes. Jenkins provided a way of handling dynamic adjust mesh by evaluating the temporal visibility. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention was made to incorporate temporal visibility factor taught by Jenkins into modified invention off Roimela such that when dealing with patches of texture atlas using orthographic projection, system will be able to using temporal visibility factor to minimize visual artifacts, enhance user experience and improve analytic accuracy and optimize system performance to provide high quality and more reliable 3D volumetric data.
Regarding Claim 1, it recites limitations similar in scope to the limitations of Claim 9 but as a method and the combination of Roimela, Jenkins and Zhou teaches all the limitations as of Claim 9. Therefore is rejected under the same rationale.
Regarding Claim 3, it recites limitations similar in scope to the limitations of Claim 11 and therefore is rejected under the same rationale.
Regarding Claim 4, it recites limitations similar in scope to the limitations of Claim 12 and therefore is rejected under the same rationale.
Regarding Claim 5, it recites limitations similar in scope to the limitations of Claim 13 and therefore is rejected under the same rationale.
Regarding Claim 6, it recites limitations similar in scope to the limitations of Claim 14 and therefore is rejected under the same rationale.
Regarding Claim 8, it recites limitations similar in scope to the limitations of Claim 16 and therefore is rejected under the same rationale.
Regarding Claim 17, it recites limitations similar in scope to the limitations of claim 9, but in a system. As shown in the rejection, the combination of Roimela, Jenkins and Zhou disclose the limitations of claims 9. Additionally, Roimela discloses an system that maps to Fig. 1 & 12 and Paragraph [0027], [0033], [0126] (Roimela, Paragraph [0027], [0033], [0126] using a variety of capture solutions, e.g. multi-camera, laser scan, combination of video and dedicated depth sensors, and more. A of renderer 102 and coded view B of renderer 104. A renderer, as used throughout this description, is for example a camera, a projector, a display, etc. The encoding algorithm at high level may proceed as in the volumetric video coding general multi view encoding description 1200 as described and shown in FIG. 12). Thus, Claim 17 is met by Roimela according to the mapping presented in the rejection of claims 9, given the apparatus corresponds to the system.
Regarding Claim 19, it recites limitations similar in scope to the limitations of Claim 11 and therefore is rejected under the same rationale.
Regarding Claim 20, it recites limitations similar in scope to the limitations of Claim 12 and therefore is rejected under the same rationale.
Regarding Claim 21, it recites limitations similar in scope to the limitations of Claim 13 and therefore is rejected under the same rationale.
Regarding Claim 22, it recites limitations similar in scope to the limitations of Claim 14 and therefore is rejected under the same rationale.
Regarding Claim 24, it recites limitations similar in scope to the limitations of Claim 16 and therefore is rejected under the same rationale.
.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim 1, 9, 17 filed on 9/13/2025, with respect to rejection under 35 USC § 103 have been considered but are moot in view of the new ground(s) of rejection. it has now been taught by the combination of prior arts Roimela, Jenkins and Zhou.
In regard to Claims 3-6,8,11-14,16,19-22 and 24, they directly/indirectly depends on independent Claim 1, 9, 17 respectively. Applicant does not argue anything other than the independent claim 1, 9, 17. The limitations in those claims in conjunction with combination previously established as explained.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
US 20180075648 A1 - Structure modelling
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to YUJANG TSWEI whose telephone number is (571)272-6669. The examiner can normally be reached 8:30am-5:30pm EST.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Kent Chang can be reached at (571)272-7667. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/YuJang Tswei/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2614