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 .
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 1-6, 8, 12-17, 19-20 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
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, 5-6, 8, 12-14, 16-17, 19-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhai (CN105243682) in view of Lin et al. (CN113920233), Kipman et al. (US2010/0302253), and Liu et al. (CN104183000).
To claim 1, Zhai teach a bone model combination method (Fig. 6), comprising:
obtaining a plurality of bone models that is to be combined (Bs, Cs, Ds, Es of Fig. 6), each of the plurality of bone models comprising a pixel set (pixel obviously in animation), and each bone model corresponding to a common skeleton (A of Fig. 6; obviously applicable to a common skeleton);
determining, for two bone models among the plurality of bone models, a set of common bones that is an intersection of bones sets corresponding to the two bone models and at least partially overlap (B&C, C&D, C&E of Fig. 6);
determining, for all the common bones in the intersection, common bone chains (paragraphs 0166-0168, make up the character are composed of six parts);
generating common bone chain duplicates based on the common bone chains, and binding the common bone chain duplicates at upper common bones of the common bone chains (paragraphs 0083-0085, applying one or more limb component models is interpreted as duplicating or copying from a database); and
building (i) a mapping between each of the common bone chains and a pixel set included in a corresponding bone model of the two bone models, and (ii) a mapping between each of the common bone chain duplicates bound at the upper common bones and a pixel set included in a corresponding bone model of the two bone models (mapping is obvious in posture presentation in Fig. 6; paragraphs 0075-0080, 0151-0154).
But, Zhai do not expressly disclose a first common bone chain duplicate of the common bone chain duplicates being (i) a duplicate of a first common bone chain of the common bone chains and (ii) bound to a same position in the common skeleton as the first common bone chain.
However, such feature would be obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art as preference of animated character.
In furthering said obviousness, Lin teach a skeleton model generation method (abstract) dynamically combing and rendering multiple final model modules with selections from a plurality of model templates including component templates and body shape templates (Figs. 1-4; paragraphs 0053-0080), wherein the same basic character skeleton is allowed to be arbitrarily matched with corresponding parts and movements (paragraph 0064), which correspond to Zhai’s selection and combining limb element models.
Kipman teach creating an animated avatar model in pixels with mapping joints/nodes to interconnect body parts (Figs. 6-9, paragraphs 0064, 0079, 0121-0126).
Liu teach building a skeletal model having (i) a duplicate of a first common bone chain of the common bone chains and (ii) bound to a same position in the common skeleton as the first common bone chain (Figs. 3a-c, 7, duplicated heads, tails, etc.)
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 teachings of Lin, Kipman, and Liu into the method of Zhai, in order to implement skeletal model generation by design preference.
To claim 12, Zhai, Lin, Kipman and Liu teach a bone model combination apparatus (as explained in response to claim 1 above).
To claim 20, Zhai, Lin, Kipman and Liu teach a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing computer-readable instructions thereon, which, when executed by processing circuitry, cause the processing circuitry to perform a bone model combination method (as explained in response to claim 1 above).
To claims 2 and 13, Zhai, Lin, Kipman and Liu teach claims 1 and 12.
Zhai, Lin, Kipman and Liu teach wherein the common skeleton is composed of a plurality of common bones having a hierarchical relationship; each of the plurality of bone models further comprises a bone set corresponding to a common bone set of the common skeleton; and the determining, for the common bones in the intersection, the common bone chains comprises: determining, for the common bones in the intersection, the common bone chains based on the hierarchical relationship between the common bones (Zhai, paragraph 0043; Kipman, paragraphs 0069-0070, hierarchical relationship in skeletal modeling).
To claims 3 and 14, Zhai, Lin, Kipman and Liu teach claims 2 and 13.
Zhai, Lin, Kipman and Liu teach wherein the determining, for the common bones in the intersection, the common bone chains based on the hierarchical relationship between the common bones comprises: determining a common bone chain set covering the common bones and having a smallest quantity of common bone chains; and determining the common bone chains according to the common bone chain set, wherein each of the common bone chains does not contain two or more common bones belonging to a same layer of the common skeleton (Zhai, paragraphs 0043, 0171, the data or process of animation processing has a distinct hierarchical structure; paragraphs 0076, 0086, limb components are divided into six types, head, torso, left arm, right arm, left leg, and right leg, wherein the smallest quantity of the common bone chain would be six, or the smallest quantity of each of said six types would be one; paragraphs 0015, 0158-0160, each layer has only one color block or sub-component)
To claims 5 and 16, Zhai, Lin, Kipman and Liu teach claims 2 and 13.
Zhai, Lin, Kipman and Liu teach wherein the generating the common bone chain duplicates comprises: duplicating the common bones in the common bone chains and the hierarchical relationship of the common bones to obtain the common bone chain duplicates, wherein each common bone in the common bone chain duplicates and each common bone in the common bone chains have different bone identifiers (Kipman, paragraph 0069, nodes can be connected by interconnects, e.g., bones, and hierarchical relationships that define a parent-child system similar to that of a tree can be established; Zhai, identifiers as shown in Fig. 6).
To claims 6 and 17, Zhai, Lin, Kipman and Liu teach claims 5 and 16.
Zhai, Lin, Kipman and Liu teach the method further comprising: building a temporary upper common bone in response to a determination that the common bone chains do not have upper common bones, the binding the common bone chain duplicates at the upper common bones comprising: respectively binding the common bone chains and the common bone chain duplicates to the temporary upper common bone (Zhai, paragraphs 0071, 0166-0167, if another element B can be placed in a certain layer inside element A, then B is a sub-element of A, select appropriate limb component models to form a character, wherein duplicating/copying and temporality would be obvious in applying limb component models from a database before completion of bone model generation).
To claims 8 and 19, Zhai, Lin, Kipman and Liu teach claims 1 and 12.
Zhai, Lin, Kipman and Liu teach the method further comprising: in response to a determination that a redundant bone exists in a common bone chain duplicate, removing the redundant bone from the common bone chain duplicate, the redundant bone comprising a redundant common bone located in the common bone chain duplicate and not belonging to a common bone set corresponding to a corresponding bone model (Lin, paragraphs 0069-0070, remove redundant).
Claim(s) 4, 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhai (CN105243682) in view of Lin et al. (CN113920233), Kipman et al. (US2010/0302253), Liu et al. (CN104183000) and Wang et al. (CN110706276).
To claims 4 and 15, Zhai, Lin, Kipman and Liu teach claims 2 and 13.
Zhai, Lin, Kipman and Liu teach wherein the determining, for the common bones in the intersection, the common bone chains based on the hierarchical relationship between the common bones comprises: setting, for each common bone among the common bones, the respective common bone and lower common bones corresponding to the respective common bone in the common skeleton as a to-be-confirmed (interpreted as temporary before completion) common bone chain; and in response to a determination that two to-be-confirmed common bone chains of the to-be-confirmed common bone chains have an inclusion relationship, designating one of the two to-be-confirmed common bone chains with a larger number of common bones as one of the common bone chains, wherein the upper common bones and lower common bones of the common bone chains are determined based on the hierarchical relationship (obvious in Zhai, paragraphs 0051, 0076, 0086, relative proportions, limb components are divided into six types, head, torso, left arm, right arm, left leg, and right leg; paragraph 0039, 0059, selecting appropriate limb component models or body parts).
In furthering said obviousness, Wang teach generating a skeleton model (abstract), wherein the determining, for the all the common bones in the intersection, the common bone chains based on the hierarchical relationship between the common bones (Figs. 1-4; paragraphs 0051-0075, using each skeleton node as the root node, gradually associate the connected similar
skeleton limbs and other similar tree-like skeleton structures to generate similar skeleton
structures), which would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate into the method and apparatus of Zhai, Lin, Kipman and Liu, in order to implement hierarchical relationship between the common bones.
Conclusion
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 ZHIYU LU whose telephone number is (571)272-2837. The examiner can normally be reached Weekdays: 8:30AM - 5:00PM.
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ZHIYU . LU
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2669
/ZHIYU LU/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2665 April 21, 2026
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