DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1-6, 8-13 and 15-20 are pending in this application and have been given the priority date of 09/22/2022 in accordance with applicant’s claim to the prior filed provisional application. Claims 1, 8 and 15 are amended and claims 7, 14 and 20 have been canceled.
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 01/20/2026 has been entered.
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 .
Priority
Claims 1-20 have been given the priority date of 09/22/2022 in accordance with applicant’s claim to the prior filed provisional application.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on 09/01/2023, 01/26/2026 and 02/10/2026 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements are being considered by the examiner.
Response to Arguments
35 U.S.C. 103
Applicant’s arguments (See Remarks filed 01/20/2026) regarding the rejections made under Chevet (WO 2022023002 A1) and Joshi (20220164994 A1) have been fully considered by the examiner and are not persuasive. The applicant argues that Joshi fails to teach “determining that an original UV mapping of the one or more faces comprises a UV coordinate greater than 1 or less than zero” of amended claims 1, 8 and 15. The examiner disagrees, the broadest reasonable interpretation of this limitation is that a mapping or coordinate of a face/patch/region contains a coordinate which has a value greater than 1 or less than 0, further this does not limit the patch or face from contains other coordinates which have 0 or decimal value coordinates. Joshi teaches in [0185] and [0188] that when generating the overlapping patches, at least one of the occupied vertices must be non-zero, further in figure 8B, several vertices within the patch/face are shown as having non-zero values greater than 1. One of ordinary skill in the art would understand this teaching of Joshi as being analogous to the newly added limitations of claims 1, 8 and 15. For at least the reasons above the examiner maintains the rejections made under 35 U.S.C. 103 over Chevet in view of Joshi.
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Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 1-6, 8-13 and 15-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chevet (WO 2022023002 A1, Published 2022-02-03) in view of Joshi (20220164994 A1).
Regarding claim 1, Chevet discloses; A method for merging multiple attribute maps for mesh compression, the method being executed by at least one processor (Chevet, Page 3, Lines 6-7, a processor executes code for implementing the method), the method comprising:
obtaining multiple attribute maps associated with a mesh (Chevet, Page 1, Background, Lines 16-27, the mesh has attributes (attribute maps) associated with vertices of the mesh, each vertex has a mapped attribute, indicating multiple attribute maps), wherein the multiple attribute maps comprise two or more texture maps associated with the mesh (Chevet, Page 6, lines 20-30, an attribute may have an associated texture coordinate which belongs to a pixel in a texture map, Page 14, Lines 17-25, each coordinate is associated with a texture image file (indicating multiple texture maps/files));
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[based on determining that one or more faces of at least one texture map among the multiple attribute maps crosses a boundary of the at least one texture map, signaling the one or more faces that cross the boundary of the at least one texture map, the determining that the one or more faces of the at least one texture map crosses the boundary of the at least one texture map comprises:
determining that an original UV mapping of the one or more faces comprises a UV coordinate greater than 1 or less than zero;
based on the one or more faces of the at least one texture map crossing the boundary of the at least one texture map,]
generating a single concatenated map based on concatenating the multiple attribute maps (Chevet, Page 15, Lines 9-15, the mapped points/values may be interpolated on one occupancy map, Examiner is interpreting the multiple mappings as being multiple maps, which are then marked/mapped to one occupancy map (single concatenated map)),
[ the single concatenated map comprising no more faces crossing the boundary of the at least one texture map, and the generating comprising:
determining that an area, corresponding to a width or a height of a face of the one or more faces, repeats across a boundary
generating a modified texture map of the at least one texture map with modified UV coordinates based on the respective repeated area;
and generating the single concatenated map based on concatenating the modified texture map and the multiple attribute maps;]
and generating concatenated UV coordinates for each of the multiple attribute maps based on re-computing original UV coordinates of each of the multiple attribute maps within the single concatenated map (Chevet, Page 3, Lines 9-20, vertex and texture coordinates are combined (concatenated coordinates) with attributes to obtain a single 3D mesh (concatenated map)).
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Chevet does not disclose;
based on determining that one or more faces of at least one texture map among the multiple attribute maps crosses a boundary of the at least one texture map, signaling the one or more faces that cross the boundary of the at least one texture map, the determining that the one or more faces of the at least one texture map crosses the boundary of the at least one texture map comprises:
determining that an original UV mapping of the one or more faces comprises a UV coordinate greater than 1 or less than zero;
based on the one or more faces of the at least one texture map crossing the boundary of the at least one texture map, generating a single concatenated map based on concatenating the multiple attribute maps, the single concatenated map comprising no more faces crossing the boundary of the at least one texture map, and the generating comprising:
determining that an area, corresponding to a width or a height of a face of the one or more faces, repeats across a boundary
generating a modified texture map of the at least one texture map with modified UV coordinates based on the respective repeated area;
and generating the single concatenated map based on concatenating the modified texture map and the multiple attribute maps;]
However, in the same field of endeavor Joshi teaches;
based on determining that one or more faces of at least one texture map among the multiple attribute maps crosses a boundary of the at least one texture map (Joshi, [0193] the encoder generates overlapped patches, where a patch is a triangle (or face) of the mesh, [0037] each point in the mesh has a texture, color and attribute mapping with it, therefore if the patches have overlapping edges or vertices as taught in [0193] , they would also have overlap with the texture mappings), signaling the one or more faces that cross the boundary of the at least one texture map (Applicant defines in specification [0074] that the signaling of a face that crosses a boundary is to essentially note which faces cross a boundary so no faces intersect, Joshi, [0188] in generating overlapping patches, it is determined that none of the patch vertices or edges intersect each other)
the determining that the one or more faces of the at least one texture map crosses the boundary of the at least one texture map comprises: (Applicant defines in specification [0074] that the signaling of a face that crosses a boundary is to essentially note which faces cross a boundary so no faces intersect, Joshi, [0188] in generating overlapping patches, it is determined that none of the patch vertices or edges intersect each other)
determining that an original UV mapping of the one or more faces comprises a UV coordinate greater than 1 or less than zero; (Joshi, [0188] one of the limitations for patch vertex determination includes determining that a patch occupied vertex is non-zero, [0185] figure 4B shows the method for determining the vertices, where several patch vertices are non-zero values and larger than 1)
based on the one or more faces of the at least one texture map crossing the boundary of the at least one texture map (Joshi, [0193] the encoder generates overlapped patches, where a patch is a triangle (or face) of the mesh, [0037] each point in the mesh has a texture, color and attribute mapping with it, therefore if the patches have overlapping edges or vertices as taught in [0193], they would also have overlap with the texture mappings),
the single concatenated map comprising no more faces crossing the boundary of the at least one texture map, and the generating comprising (Applicant defines in specification [0074] that the signaling of a face that crosses a boundary is to essentially note which faces cross a boundary so no faces intersect, Joshi, [0188] in generating overlapping patches, it is determined that none of the patch vertices or edges intersect each other, therefore when the mesh (concatenated map) is generated the patch (face) edges may not be interesting, further [0127] of Joshi teaches that the vertices making up the edge of a patch (face) will not lie on or intersect the boundary of a patch):
determining that an area, corresponding to a width or a height of a face of the one or more faces, repeats across a boundary (Joshi, [0145] in occupancy information of the mesh (which includes texture mapping information) is lost in the processing, vertices and edges of a face are repeated in reconstruction)
generating a modified texture map of the at least one texture map with modified UV coordinates based on the respective repeated area (Joshi, [0146] bounding boxes can be derived for poor quality patches needing reconstruction (patches in the mesh contain texture mapping information), these are generated using patch size, location of the patch, and range of the data for the patch, the repeated area in this case is the patch being regenerated);
and generating the single concatenated map based on concatenating the modified texture map and the multiple attribute maps (Joshi, [0040] the encoder takes inputs derived from a base mesh, generates a geometry frame, attribute frames and occupancy map frames and generates one output mesh reconstruction (concatenated map));
The combination of Chevet and Joshi would be obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the presently claimed invention. The motivation for the combination lies in that the repeated region reconstruction of Joshi would allow for the ability to reconstruct data that was lost in processing using original data from the set. (Joshi, [0037], [0040], [0074], [0127], [146] and [0193])
Regarding claim 2, the combination of Chevet and Joshi teaches; The method of claim 1, wherein the generating the single concatenated map comprises:
concatenating the multiple attribute maps in 2D (Chevet, Page 1, lines 24-26 multiple attribute mappings/points will be projected on 2D images, the attribute maps will be combined in 2D), wherein a length and a breadth of the single concatenated map is based on a number of attribute maps included in the multiple attribute maps (Chevet, Page 1, lines 16-23, the attributes (attribute mappings) are associated with vertices and edges of the 3D model, given that the mappings are determining the model’s shape, size, vertices, and faces of the model, the length and breadth/heigh would be computed using this as well);
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(Chevet, Page 1)
and padding empty pixels between the multiple attribute maps in the single concatenated map with a padding value (Chevet, Page 15, Lines 9-15, in an instance of sparse vertices (or less data, i.e. more empty point in the mesh), a value (padding) value is assigned to the points).
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(Chevet, Page 15)
Regarding claim 3, the combination of Chevet and Joshi teaches; The method of claim 2, wherein the padding value is zero, and wherein the padding comprises assigning red-green-blue (RGB) channels in the empty pixels with zero values (Joshi, [0203] if a pixel in the occupancy map is invalid, it can have a value of zero).
The combination of Chevet and Joshi would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the presently claimed invention. The motivation for the combination lies in that the method of zero padding an invalid or empty pixel allows the dimensions of the mesh to be controlled by applying a value of zero to a region with no data. (Joshi, [0203])
Regarding claim 4, the combination of Chevet and Joshi teaches; The method of claim 2, wherein the padding value is non-zero, and wherein the padding comprises assigning RGB channels in the empty pixels with non-zero values (Chevet, Page 15, Lines 9-15, in an instance of sparse vertices (or less data, i.e. more empty point in the mesh), a value (padding) value is assigned to the points).
Regarding claim 5, the combination of Chevet and Joshi teaches; The method of claim 1, wherein generating the concatenated UV coordinates comprises:
determining the original UV coordinates for each of the multiple attribute maps within the single concatenated map (Chevet, Page 15, Lines 9-15 original vertices (U,V) coordinates of the mesh are “densified” in an instance of sparse points by using the original vertices as the pre-processing data, since this data is used as the preprocessing data the original coordinates must be determined first);
Chevet does not disclose; determining an offset for the original UV coordinates for each of the multiple attribute maps within the single concatenated map;
and generating the concatenated UV coordinates for each of the multiple attribute maps within the single concatenated map based on the original UV coordinates and the offset for the original UV coordinates.
However, Joshi teaches; determining an offset for the original UV coordinates for each of the multiple attribute maps within the single concatenated map (Joshi, [0044] an offset is determined for UV coordinates so a patch can be determined, [0043] patches are part of the map);
and generating the concatenated UV coordinates for each of the multiple attribute maps within the single concatenated map based on the original UV coordinates and the offset for the original UV coordinates (Joshi, [0147] coordinates in the patch are determined from an original coordinate and from reconstructed points).
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(Joshi, [0147], emphasis added)
The combination of Chevet and Joshi would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the presently claimed invention. The motivation for the combination lies in that the point concatenation method of Joshi would improve the system of Chevet because if data is lost, the points may reconstructed to compensate for the loss of data using concatenation. (Joshi, [0147])
Regarding claim 6, the combination of Chevet and Joshi teaches; The method of claim 5, wherein based on determining that a first texture map among the multiple attribute maps has a repetition of a pattern (Joshi, [0204] a predefined pattern is identified in the pixels, of the occupancy map (texture map)), the generating the concatenated UV coordinates the first texture map comprises a normalized shifting of a remainder of the original UV coordinates for the first texture map (Joshi, [0006] the locations of the 3D mesh vertices coordinates are generated to form patches, the patches are determined using the normal vectors associated with the patch locations).
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The combination of Chevet and Joshi would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the presently claimed invention. The motivation for the combination lies in that the pattern detection and normalization step of Joshi allows the edges of the polygons making up the mesh to not intersect each other (Joshi, [0006] and [0152]).
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Regarding claim 8, the combination of Chevet and Joshi teaches; An apparatus for merging multiple attribute maps for mesh compression, the apparatus comprising:
at least one memory configured to store program code (Chevet, Figure 2, Memory 22);
and at least one processor configured to read the program code and operate as instructed by the program code, the program code including (Chevet, Page 3, Lines 6-7, a processor executes code for implementing the method):
obtaining code configured to cause the at least one processor (Chevet, Page 3, Lines 6-7, a processor executes code for implementing the method) to obtain multiple attribute maps associated with a mesh (Chevet, Page 1, Background, Lines 16-27, the mesh has attributes (attribute maps) associated with vertices of the mesh, each vertex has a mapped attribute, indicating multiple attribute maps), wherein the multiple attribute maps comprise two or more texture maps associated with the mesh (Chevet, Page 6, lines 20-30, an attribute may have an associated texture coordinate which belongs to a pixel in a texture map, Page 14, Lines 17-25, each coordinate is associated with a texture image file (indicating multiple texture maps/files));
boundary crossing code configured to cause the at least one processor to, based on determining that one or more faces of at least one texture map among the multiple attribute maps crosses a boundary of the at least one texture map Joshi, [0193] the encoder generates overlapped patches, where a patch is a triangle (or face) of the mesh, [0037] each point in the mesh has a texture, color and attribute mapping with it, therefore if the patches have overlapping edges or vertices as taught in [0193] , they would also have overlap with the texture mappings), signaling the one or more faces that cross the boundary of the at least one texture map (Applicant defines in specification [0074] that the signaling of a face that crosses a boundary is to essentially note which faces cross a boundary so no faces intersect, Joshi, [0188] in generating overlapping patches, it is determined that none of the patch vertices or edges intersect each other),
the determining that the one or more faces of the at least one texture map crosses the boundary of the at least one texture map comprises: (Applicant defines in specification [0074] that the signaling of a face that crosses a boundary is to essentially note which faces cross a boundary so no faces intersect, Joshi, [0188] in generating overlapping patches, it is determined that none of the patch vertices or edges intersect each other)
determining that an original UV mapping of the one or more faces comprises a UV coordinate greater than 1 or less than zero; (Joshi, [0188] one of the limitations for patch vertex determination includes determining that a patch occupied vertex is non-zero, [0185] figure 4B shows the method for determining the vertices, where several patch vertices are non-zero values and larger than 1)
first generating code (Chevet, Page 3, Lines 6-7, a processor executes code for implementing the method) configured to cause the at least one processor to, based on the one or more faces of the at least one texture map crossing the boundary of the at least one texture map (Joshi, [0193] the encoder generates overlapped patches, where a patch is a triangle (or face) of the mesh, [0037] each point in the mesh has a texture, color and attribute mapping with it, therefore if the patches have overlapping edges or vertices as taught in [0193], they would also have overlap with the texture mappings), generate a single concatenated map based on concatenating the multiple attribute maps (Chevet, Page 15, Lines 9-15, the mapped points/values may be interpolated on one occupancy map, Examiner is interpreting the multiple mappings as being multiple maps, which are then marked/mapped to one occupancy map (single concatenated map)) the single concatenated map comprising no more faces crossing the boundary of the at least one texture map, and the generating comprising (Applicant defines in specification [0074] that the signaling of a face that crosses a boundary is to essentially note which faces cross a boundary so no faces intersect, Joshi, [0188] in generating overlapping patches, it is determined that none of the patch vertices or edges intersect each other, therefore when the mesh (concatenated map) is generated the patch (face) edges may not be interesting, further [0127] of Joshi teaches that the vertices making up the edge of a patch (face) will not lie on or intersect the boundary of a patch):
determining that an area, corresponding to a width or a height of a face of the one or more faces, repeats across a boundary (Joshi, [0145] in occupancy information of the mesh (which includes texture mapping information) is lost in the processing, vertices and edges of a face are repeated in reconstruction)
generating a modified texture map of the at least one texture map with modified UV coordinates based on the respective repeated area (Joshi, [0146] bounding boxes can be derived for poor quality patches needing reconstruction (patches in the mesh contain texture mapping information), these are generated using patch size, location of the patch, and range of the data for the patch, the repeated area in this case is the patch being regenerated);
and generating the single concatenated map based on concatenating the modified texture map and the multiple attribute maps (Joshi, [0040] the encoder takes inputs derived from a base mesh, generates a geometry frame, attribute frames and occupancy map frames and generates one output mesh reconstruction (concatenated map));
and second generating code (Chevet, Page 3, Lines 6-7, a processor executes code for implementing the method) configured to cause the at least one processor to generate concatenated UV coordinates for each of the multiple attribute maps based on re-computing original UV coordinates of each of the multiple attribute maps within the single concatenated map (Chevet, Page 3, Lines 9-20, vertex and texture coordinates are combined (concatenated coordinates) with attributes to obtain a single 3D mesh (concatenated map)).
The combination of Chevet and Joshi would be obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the presently claimed invention. The motivation for the combination lies in that the repeated region reconstruction of Joshi would allow for the ability to reconstruct data that was lost in processing using original data from the set. (Joshi, [0037], [0040], [0074], [0127], [146] and [0193])
Regarding claim 9, the combination of Chevet and Joshi teaches; The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the first generating code comprises:
first concatenating code configured to cause the at least one processor to concatenate the multiple attribute maps in 2D (Chevet, Page 1, lines 24-26 multiple attribute mappings/points will be projected on 2D images, the attribute maps will be combined in 2D), wherein a length and a breadth of the single concatenated map is based on a number of attribute maps included in the multiple attribute maps (Chevet, Page 1, lines 16-23, the attributes (attribute mappings) are associated with vertices and edges of the 3D model, given that the mappings are determining the model’s shape, size, vertices, and faces of the model, the length and breadth/heigh would be computed using this as well);
and padding empty pixels between the multiple attribute maps in the single concatenated map with a padding value (Chevet, Page 15, Lines 9-15, in an instance of sparse vertices (or less data, i.e. more empty point in the mesh), a value (padding) value is assigned to the points).
Regarding claim 10, the combination of Chevet and Joshi teaches; The apparatus of claim 9,
wherein the padding value is zero, and wherein the padding comprises assigning red-green-blue (RGB) channels in the empty pixels with zero values (Joshi, [0203] if a pixel in the occupancy map is invalid, it can have a value of zero).
The combination of Chevet and Joshi would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the presently claimed invention. The motivation for the combination lies in that the method of zero padding an invalid or empty pixel allows the dimensions of the mesh to be controlled by applying a value of zero to a region with no data. (Joshi, [0203])
Regarding claim 11, the combination of Chevet and Joshi teaches; wherein the padding value is non-zero, and wherein the padding comprises assigning RGB channels in the empty pixels with non-zero values (Chevet, Page 15, Lines 9-15, in an instance of sparse vertices (or less data, i.e. more empty point in the mesh), a value (padding) value is assigned to the points).
Regarding claim 12, the combination of Chevet and Joshi teaches; The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the second generating code comprises:
first determining code (Chevet, Page 11, lines 4-17, the system has program code to be executed on a processor, which is functionally equivalent to the determining code) configured to cause the at least one processor to determine the original UV coordinates for each of the multiple attribute maps within the single concatenated map (Chevet, Page 15, Lines 9-15 original vertices (U,V) coordinates of the mesh are “densified” in an instance of sparse points by using the original vertices as the pre-processing data, since this data is used as the preprocessing data the original coordinates must be determined first);
second determining code (Joshi, [0011] program code is executed using computer readable medium) configured to cause the at least one processor to determine an offset for the original UV coordinates for each of the multiple attribute maps within the single concatenated map (Joshi, [0044] an offset is determined for UV coordinates so a patch can be determined, [0043] patches are part of the map);
and third generating code (Joshi, [0011] program code is executed using computer readable medium) configured to cause the at least one processor to generate the concatenated UV coordinates for each of the multiple attribute maps within the single concatenated map based on the original UV coordinates and the offset for the original UV coordinates (Joshi, [0147] coordinates in the patch are determined from an original coordinate and from reconstructed points).
The combination of Chevet and Joshi would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the presently claimed invention. The motivation for the combination lies in that the point concatenation method of Joshi would improve the system of Chevet because if data is lost, the points may reconstructed to compensate for the loss of data using concatenation. (Joshi, [0147])
Regarding claim 13, the combination of Chevet and Joshi teaches; The apparatus of claim 12, wherein based on determining that a first texture map among the multiple attribute maps has a repetition of a pattern (Joshi, [0204] a predefined pattern is identified in the pixels, of the occupancy map (texture map)), the generating the concatenated UV coordinates the first texture map comprises a normalized shifting of a remainder of the original UV coordinates for the first texture map (Joshi, [0006] the locations of the 3D mesh vertices coordinates are generated to form patches, the patches are determined using the normal vectors associated with the patch locations).
The combination of Chevet and Joshi would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the presently claimed invention. The motivation for the combination lies in that the pattern detection and normalization step of Joshi allows the edges of the polygons making up the mesh to not intersect each other (Joshi, [0006] and [0152]).
Regarding claim 15, the combination of Chevet and Joshi teaches; A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions, the instructions comprising (Chevet, Page 3, Lines 6-7, a processor executes code for implementing the method):
one or more instructions that, when executed by one or more processors of a device for merging multiple attribute maps for mesh compression, cause the one or more processors to (Chevet, Page 3, Lines 6-7, a processor executes code for implementing the method):
obtain multiple attribute maps associated with a mesh (Chevet, Page 1, Background, Lines 16-27, the mesh has attributes (attribute maps) associated with vertices of the mesh, each vertex has a mapped attribute, indicating multiple attribute maps), wherein the multiple attribute maps comprise two or more texture maps associated with the mesh (Chevet, Page 6, lines 20-30, an attribute may have an associated texture coordinate which belongs to a pixel in a texture map, Page 14, Lines 17-25, each coordinate is associated with a texture image file (indicating multiple texture maps/files));
based on determining that one or more faces of at least one texture map among the multiple attribute maps crosses a boundary of the at least one texture map Joshi, [0193] the encoder generates overlapped patches, where a patch is a triangle (or face) of the mesh, [0037] each point in the mesh has a texture, color and attribute mapping with it, therefore if the patches have overlapping edges or vertices as taught in [0193] , they would also have overlap with the texture mappings), signaling the one or more faces that cross the boundary of the at least one texture map (Applicant defines in specification [0074] that the signaling of a face that crosses a boundary is to essentially note which faces cross a boundary so no faces intersect, Joshi, [0188] in generating overlapping patches, it is determined that none of the patch vertices or edges intersect each other)
the determining that the one or more faces of the at least one texture map crosses the boundary of the at least one texture map comprises: (Applicant defines in specification [0074] that the signaling of a face that crosses a boundary is to essentially note which faces cross a boundary so no faces intersect, Joshi, [0188] in generating overlapping patches, it is determined that none of the patch vertices or edges intersect each other)
determining that an original UV mapping of the one or more faces comprises a UV coordinate greater than 1 or less than zero; (Joshi, [0188] one of the limitations for patch vertex determination includes determining that a patch occupied vertex is non-zero, [0185] figure 4B shows the method for determining the vertices, where several patch vertices are non-zero values and larger than 1)
based on the one or more faces of the at least one texture map crossing the boundary of the at least one texture map (Joshi, [0193] the encoder generates overlapped patches, where a patch is a triangle (or face) of the mesh, [0037] each point in the mesh has a texture, color and attribute mapping with it, therefore if the patches have overlapping edges or vertices as taught in [0193], they would also have overlap with the texture mappings), generate a single concatenated map based on concatenating the multiple attribute maps (Chevet, Page 15, Lines 9-15, the mapped points/values may be interpolated on one occupancy map, Examiner is interpreting the multiple mappings as being multiple maps, which are then marked/mapped to one occupancy map (single concatenated map)) the single concatenated map comprising no more faces crossing the boundary of the at least one texture map, and the generating comprising (Applicant defines in specification [0074] that the signaling of a face that crosses a boundary is to essentially note which faces cross a boundary so no faces intersect, Joshi, [0188] in generating overlapping patches, it is determined that none of the patch vertices or edges intersect each other, therefore when the mesh (concatenated map) is generated the patch (face) edges may not be interesting, further [0127] of Joshi teaches that the vertices making up the edge of a patch (face) will not lie on or intersect the boundary of a patch):
determining that an area, corresponding to a width or a height of a face of the one or more faces, repeats across a boundary (Joshi, [0145] in occupancy information of the mesh (which includes texture mapping information) is lost in the processing, vertices and edges of a face are repeated in reconstruction)
generating a modified texture map of the at least one texture map with modified UV coordinates based on the respective repeated area (Joshi, [0146] bounding boxes can be derived for poor quality patches needing reconstruction (patches in the mesh contain texture mapping information), these are generated using patch size, location of the patch, and range of the data for the patch, the repeated area in this case is the patch being regenerated);
and generating the single concatenated map based on concatenating the modified texture map and the multiple attribute maps (Joshi, [0040] the encoder takes inputs derived from a base mesh, generates a geometry frame, attribute frames and occupancy map frames and generates one output mesh reconstruction (concatenated map));
and generate concatenated UV coordinates for each of the multiple attribute maps based on re-computing original UV coordinates of each of the multiple attribute maps within the single concatenated map (Chevet Page 3, Lines 9-20, vertex and texture coordinates are combined (concatenated coordinates) with attributes to obtain a single 3D mesh (concatenated map)).
The combination of Chevet and Joshi would be obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the presently claimed invention. The motivation for the combination lies in that the repeated region reconstruction of Joshi would allow for the ability to reconstruct data that was lost in processing using original data from the set. (Joshi, [0037], [0040], [0074], [0127], [146] and [0193])
Regarding claim 16, the combination of Chevet and Joshi teaches; The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 15, wherein the generating the single concatenated map comprises:
concatenating the multiple attribute maps in 2D (Chevet, Page 1, lines 24-26 multiple attribute mappings/points will be projected on 2D images, the attribute maps will be combined in 2D), wherein a length and a breadth of the single concatenated map is based on a number of attribute maps included in the multiple attribute maps (Chevet, Page 1, lines 16-23, the attributes (attribute mappings) are associated with vertices and edges of the 3D model, given that the mappings are determining the model’s shape, size, vertices, and faces of the model, the length and breadth/heigh would be computed using this as well);
and padding empty pixels between the multiple attribute maps in the single concatenated map with a padding value (Chevet, Page 15, Lines 9-15, in an instance of sparse vertices (or less data, i.e. more empty point in the mesh), a value (padding) value is assigned to the points).
Regarding claim 17, the combination of Chevet and Joshi teaches; The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 16, wherein the padding value is zero, and wherein the padding comprises assigning red-green-blue (RGB) channels in the empty pixels with zero values (Joshi, [0203] if a pixel in the occupancy map is invalid, it can have a value of zero).
The combination of Chevet and Joshi would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the presently claimed invention. The motivation for the combination lies in that the method of zero padding an invalid or empty pixel allows the dimensions of the mesh to be controlled by applying a value of zero to a region with no data. (Joshi, [0203])
Regarding claim 18, the combination of Chevet and Joshi teaches; The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 15, wherein generating the concatenated UV coordinates comprises:
determining the original UV coordinates for each of the multiple attribute maps within the single concatenated map (Chevet, Page 15, Lines 9-15 original vertices (U,V) coordinates of the mesh are “densified” in an instance of sparse points by using the original vertices as the pre-processing data, since this data is used as the preprocessing data the original coordinates must be determined first);
determining an offset for the original UV coordinates for each of the multiple attribute maps within the single concatenated map (Joshi, [0044] an offset is determined for UV coordinates so a patch can be determined, [0043] patches are part of the map);
and generating the concatenated UV coordinates for each of the multiple attribute maps within the single concatenated map based on the original UV coordinates and the offset for the original UV coordinates (Joshi, [0147] coordinates in the patch are determined from an original coordinate and from reconstructed points).
The combination of Chevet and Joshi would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the presently claimed invention. The motivation for the combination lies in that the point concatenation method of Joshi would improve the system of Chevet because if data is lost, the points may reconstructed to compensate for the loss of data using concatenation. (Joshi, [0147])
Regarding claim 19, the combination of Chevet and Joshi teaches; The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 18, wherein based on determining that a first texture map among the multiple attribute maps has a repetition of a pattern (Joshi, [0204] a predefined pattern is identified in the pixels, of the occupancy map (texture map)),the generating the concatenated UV coordinates the first texture map comprises a normalized shifting of a remainder of the original UV coordinates for the first texture map (Joshi, [0006] the locations of the 3D mesh vertices coordinates are generated to form patches, the patches are determined using the normal vectors associated with the patch locations).
The combination of Chevet and Joshi would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the presently claimed invention. The motivation for the combination lies in that the pattern detection and normalization step of Joshi allows the edges of the polygons making up the mesh to not intersect each other (Joshi, [0006] and [0152]).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Sugimura (US 20190043212 A1) which teaches a method of constructing a mesh from texture information
Graziosi (US 20220108483) which teaches a method of encoding a mesh from point cloud data and generating mesh patches.
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/J.M.E./Examiner, Art Unit 2666 /Molly Wilburn/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2666
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