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 Amendment
This Office Action is in response to Applicant’s RCE amendment filed 05/11/2026 which has been entered and made of record. Claims 1-2 and 18-20 have been amended. No
claim has been cancelled or newly added. Claims 1-20 are pending in the application.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 1-20 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 (due to applicant’s arguments directed to newly amend limitation(s) which is addressed by new prior art presented in this Office Action).
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) 1-4, 7-12, and 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lier et al (A High-Resolution Compression Scheme for Ray Tracing Subdivision Surfaces with Displacement), hereinafter referenced as Lier, in view of MUTHLER et al. (U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2020/0050550), hereinafter referenced as Muthler, Hanika et al. (Two-Level Ray Tracing with Reordering for Highly Complex Scenes), hereinafter referenced as Hanika, and Huddy (U.S. Patent No. 5,771,341), hereinafter referenced as Huddy.
Regarding claim 1, Lier teaches a method of performing tessellation of a patch in a ray tracing system for rendering an image within a scene, (page 1, second paragraph teaches "ray tracing environments...incoherent access patterns require storing or caching fully tessellated and displaced meshes for efficient intersection computations. In this paper we use a two-tier hierarchy built on a scene’s patches" and fig. 5 teaches image rendered); this shows tessellation with patches done in raytracing system and rendering an image of fig. 5; wherein the patch represents a portion of a surface of an object within the scene, (fig. 1 and page 1, first paragraph (fig. 1 description) teaches "The model shown above is composed of 8 control points and a displacement map that introduces 9 spikes on each patch."); 9 spikes of object on each patch shows a patch consists of a portion of surface of object within the scene; the object defined in 3D space using a first space-coordinate system, (page 4, paragraph 4 teaches "The first element of the compression is an aggressive hierarchical quantization, which stores bounds of subnodes relative to their parent nodes and requires only few bits (e.g., three bits in local x,y and two in z)." and figs. 2-3 visualize this); this shows object defined in 3D space using first space-coordinate system; the method comprising: determining a bounding volume that contains the patch (page 4, paragraph 1 teaches "uncompressed BVH composed of globally axis-aligned bounding volumes that contain the scene’s subdivided patches." and fig. 2 visualizes this); determining whether a ray intersects the bounding volume (page 8, last paragraph teaches "efficiently tested for ray intersections.", page 9 continued first paragraph teaches "these approaches do not take into account that the entry and exit point of the surrounding bounding box are known during traversal. Exploiting this fact, our approximation can be tested for intersection with only one single 2D line intersection test. To this end, we use an approximate intersection test that projects the ray onto a straight line on the surface." and fig. 9 visualizes the ray intersecting bounding volume); this shows testing bounding box for intersection using a ray.
However, Lier fails to explicitly teach in response to determining that the ray intersects the bounding volume, and in dependence on tessellation indications associated with the patch, performing subdividing of the patch, one or more times to generate a plurality of patch sub-units, (although, Lier, page 4, first paragraph teaches "The top-level is a standard, uncompressed BVH composed of globally axis-aligned bounding volumes that contain the scene’s subdivided patches. These patch fragments, or subpatches, must satisfy a certain criterion in flatness,...quantized 4-wide BVHs (called CBVHs)" and fig. 2 visualizes this subdivision); wherein one or more of the patch sub- units does not represent a primitive; subsequent to performing the subdividing of the patch, determining that at least one of the patch sub-units comprises a primitive; and performing an intersection test between the ray and the primitive for use in rendering the image of the scene.
However, Muthler explicitly teaches in response to determining that the ray intersects the bounding volume, and in dependence on tessellation indications associated with the patch, performing subdividing of the patch, one or more times to generate a plurality of patch sub-units, (Muthler, paragraph 95 teaches "If the bounding box test performed by the traversal coprocessor 138 reveals that the bounding volume is intersected by the ray (“Yes” in Step 514), then the traversal coprocessor determines if the bounding volume can be subdivided into smaller bounding volumes (step 518)" and fig. 4, step 518 teaches a "yes" path for more subdivisions); further subdivisions would mean sub-units of patch and this is if the bounding volume intersects ray; wherein one or more of the patch sub- units does not represent a primitive (Muthler, paragraph 95 teaches "Rather, each node in the BVH has one or more children (where each child is a leaf or a branch in the BVH)." and fig. 4, step 518 teaches a "yes" path); subdivisions from above aren't primitives since the steps repeat (are recursive from step 518 to step 512) and they can be subdivided again until "no" occurs in path 518 and node can be (in contrary to leaf) a branch which isn't primitive since applicant's paragraph 5 mentions "one or more primitives, i.e., a leaf node does not have child nodes in the hierarchical acceleration structure. In some examples, a leaf node may simply refer to a primitive or list of primitives."; subsequent to performing the subdividing of the patch, determining that at least one of the patch sub-units comprises a primitive (Muthler, fig. 4, step 518 teaches a "no" path after subdivision); once not further subdividable, patch sub-unit is determined as primitive and thus proceeds to step 520 of ray-primitive test; and performing an intersection test between the ray and the primitive for use in rendering the image of the scene (Muthler, paragraph 96 teaches "the traversal coprocessor performs a primitive (e.g., triangle) intersection test 520 to determine whether the ray intersects primitives in the intersected bounding volumes and which primitives the ray intersects"); this leads to image as fig. 5 of Lier or the return step 522 of Muthler of ray tracing which one of ordinary skill in the art would understand is a rendering of an image of the scene since result of ray tracing. Muthler is considered to be analogous art because it is reasonably pertinent to the problem faced by the inventor of ray tracing and bounding volume hierarchy operations using sub-units of patches and primitives. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Lier's invention with the ray tracing and bounding volume techniques of Muthler to ensure an improved hardware-based scheduling cache memory for ray tracing bounding volume hierarchy traversal (Muthler, paragraph 8). This would mean a more efficient system overall.
However, the combination of Lier and Muthler fails to explicitly teach performing subdividing…to generate a plurality of patch sub-units.
However, Hanika teaches performing subdividing…to generate a plurality of patch sub-units (Hanika, page 5, left column, section 3.5, second bullet teaches “Group rays by generation. This fixes the memory requirements for this wave of rays, but suffers from re-dicing for each
pass.” And right column fig. 6 description teaches “would consist of around 8.4 billion triangles (micropolygons from 12k displaced Bezier patches). Due to the on-demand
procedural geometry generation and the level of detail system,”); on-demand procedural geometry generation shows the plurality of patch sub-units would be generated and this is done by performing the “re-dicing” thus subdivision. Hanika is considered to be analogous art because it is reasonably pertinent to the problem faced by the inventor of ray tracing highly complex scene. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the combination of Lier and Muthler with the patch sub-unit generation techniques of Hanika to efficiently handles complex shading operations (Hanika, abstract). This would be due to the on-demand generation.
However, the combination of Lier, Muthler and Hanika fails to explicitly teach performing subdividing of the patch in two-dimensional space.
However, Huddy teaches performing subdividing of the patch in two-dimensional space (Huddy, col. 6, lines 2-4 teach “after transformation into two-dimensional viewing space, sub-division is performed n times for each patch”); this shows the subdividing of patch would be performed in two-dimensional space. is considered to be analogous art because it is reasonably pertinent to the problem faced by the inventor of subdivision of patches. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the combination of Lier, Muthler and Hanika with the patch in two-dimensional space techniques of Huddy to ensure a determination is made as to the number of sub-divisions required before entering interactive control, wherein the efficient use of processing power is critical (Huddy, col. 2, lines 51-54). This would increase power optimization by knowing in certain scenarios the amount of sub-divisions needed to avoid fully subdividing everything upfront or only subdividing to the extent needed..
Regarding claim 2, the combination of Lier, Muthler, Hanika and Huddy teaches further comprising: performing a further ray intersection test with a secondary bounding volume, (Muthler, paragraph 93 teaches "The traversal coprocessor 138 determines which bounding volumes of a BVH data structure the ray intersects (the “ray-complet” test 512)" and fig. 4 step 512 shows recursively checking bounding volume); recursion here means testing second bounding volume with the ray intersection test as well; wherein the secondary bounding volume contains a subset of the plurality of patch sub- units (Muthler, fig. 4, step 512 in some scenarios occurs after step 518 goes to "yes"); this means the subdivided patch from step 518 (subset can be one so it would be one instance of the patch sub-unit) undergoes the bounding volume test of step 512; responsive to determining that the ray intersects the secondary bounding volume, performing further subdividing of the subset of patch sub-units to generate a plurality of further patch sub- units (Muthler, fig. 4, step 514 checks for intersection then subdivides in step 518); further subdivision in recursion would result in further patch sub-unit. The same motivations used in claim 1 apply here in claim 2.
Regarding claim 3, the combination of Lier, Muthler, Hanika and Huddy teaches wherein the plurality of patch sub-units comprises one or more sub-patches, or a mixture of one or more primitives and one or more sub- patches (Muthler, paragraph 85 teaches "FIG. 2E shows a further such subdivision of bounding volume 204 into a further smaller contained bounding volume 206 containing in this example just the spout of the teapot plus another surface on the wall of the teapot, and FIG. 2F shows an additional subdivision of bounding volume 206 into still smaller contained subdivision 208 encapsulating the end of the teapot's spout." and paragraph 86 teaches "FIG. 2G shows the surface of the teapot's spout defined by an example mesh of geometric primitives."); fig. 2E represents patches sub-unit which comprises one or more sub-patches like fig. 2F which comprises primitives like fig. 2G. The same motivations used in claim 1 apply here in claim 3.
Regarding claim 4, the combination of Lier, Muthler, Hanika and Huddy teaches wherein the one or more sub-patches are configured to be subdivided, in dependence on the tessellation indications, into a plurality of primitives (Muthler, paragraph 85 teaches "system 100 to efficiently traverse the BVH down to any arbitrary subdivision level. The number and configurations of recursive subdivisions will depend on the complexity and configuration of the 3D object being modeled as well as other factors such as desired resolution, distance of the object from the viewpoint, etc." and paragraph 86 teaches "FIG. 2G shows the surface of the teapot's spout defined by an example mesh of geometric primitives….For example, in the mesh shown in FIG. 2G, the spout of the teapot alone is made up of over a hundred triangles—although it may be more efficient in some implementations to further volumetrically subdivide and thereby limit the number of triangles in any such “leaf node” to something like 16 or fewer."); this is consistent with tessellation indications (desired factors of subdivision) and sub-patches divided to primitives is consistent with applicant's disclosure definition of primitives since applicant's paragraph 5 mentions "one or more primitives, i.e., a leaf node does not have child nodes in the hierarchical acceleration structure. In some examples, a leaf node may simply refer to a primitive or list of primitives.". The same motivations used in claim 1 apply here in claim 4.
Regarding claim 7, the combination of Lier, Muthler, Hanika and Huddy teaches further comprising, prior to performing the intersection test between the ray and the primitive, retrieving displacement information associated with the primitive and displacing the primitive, (Lier, page 1, fig. 1 description teaches "The model shown above is composed of 8 control points and a
displacement map that introduces 9 spikes on each patch" and page 1, paragraph 2 teaches "Subdivision surfaces, especially with displacement, are one of the key modeling primitives used in high-quality rendering environments"); this shows as one of first steps displacing (so prior to intersection test) and is for primitive; wherein the intersection test is performed between the ray and the displaced primitive (Lier, page 8, fig. 8 description teaches "the displacement primarily affects the height of the bounding volumes" and Muthler, fig. 4, step 520 teaches ray-primitive test); when viewed in combination, the displaced primitive would adjust the bounding volume and thus the bounding volume prior to ray-primitive test from Muthler would be adjusted meaning the ray-primitive test would occur on the adjusted bounding volume and displaced primitive. The same motivations used in claim 1 apply here in claim 7.
Regarding claim 8, the combination of Lier, Muthler, Hanika and Huddy teaches further comprising, prior to the determining whether the ray intersects the bounding volume: transforming the ray into a patch-aligned space-coordinate system, (Lier, page 4, paragraph 3 teaches "The per-CBVH transformation ensures that the vertices of the local subpatch are mostly planar and rectangularly arranged in the local space. As a result, bounding volumes of such vertices are aligned to the subpatch’s parameter space."); vertices aligned to subpatch's parameter space shows patch-aligned space-coordinate system and this is CBVH transformation meaning ray intersection test (from claim 1) for the bounding volume CBVH would be transformed; being a 3D space-coordinate system, wherein a plane of the patch is parallel with two axes of the patch-aligned space, (Lier, page 5, fig. 2 and description thereof teaches "For almost flat sub-patches, compressed and quantized CBVHs are built and embedded in the standard BVH."); fig. 2 is shown in 3D space-coordinate system and since patch is almost flat, the plane of patch is parallel to the two axes of patch-aligned space (top and bottom of CBVH); and wherein the determined bounding volume that contains the patch is an axis-aligned bounding box in the patch-aligned space-coordinate system (Lier, page 4, paragraph 1 teaches "The top-level is a standard, uncompressed BVH composed of globally axis-aligned bounding volumes that contain the scene’s subdivided patches...The bottom-level, and thus the bulk of the hierarchy, is then made up of compressed and quantized 4-wide BVHs (called CBVHs)"); the top level BVH (axis-aligned bounding box) contains the bottom level CBVH which is transformed (patch-aligned space-coordinate system); wherein the transforming ray into patch-aligned space comprises applying an affine transformation (Lier, page 5, last paragraph teaches "the alignment fits well for the interior node for which it is constructed, and provides a better frame of reference for compression, but further subdivision can yield patches that are rotated somewhat with respect to this frame, and will thus be approximated by a non-planar box" and page 7, second to last paragraph teaches "Note that, for patches on CBVH-borders, neighboring boxes can also be rotated differently"); the rotations here show affine transformation applied and it's in the process of transforming ray into patch-aligned space (since for the CBVH); and wherein the patch, when defined in the patch-aligned space, is a rectangle (Lier, page 4, paragraph 3 teaches "The per-CBVH transformation ensures that the vertices of the local subpatch are mostly planar and rectangularly arranged in the local space."); vertices of local patch arranged rectangularly indicates patch as rectangle.
Regarding claim 9, the combination of Lier, Muthler, Hanika and Huddy teaches wherein the patch is a parallelogram when defined in the first space-coordinate system (Lier, fig. 2 shows parallelogram as patch in first space-coordinate system).
Regarding claim 10, the combination of Lier, Muthler, Hanika and Huddy teaches wherein each of the plurality of patch sub-units is a triangle (Lier, page 9, fig. 9 shows patches with two triangles and description thereof teaches "2 bilinear patches"); this shows the patch subunits are triangles since two triangles/sub-units make up the one triangle/patch.
Regarding claim 11, the combination of Lier, Muthler, Hanika and Huddy teaches wherein performing the subdividing of the patch comprises creating one or more new edges within the patch, (Lier, page 6, last paragraph teaches "our approach snaps vertices of the finest tessellation level onto the vertical edges of leaf-level bounding volumes"); this shows being able to snap vertices onto verticle edges of a tessellation (tessellation would include patch) leading to a new edge created; wherein each new edge connects two existing patch vertices, or connects an existing vertex and a new vertex defined to bisect an existing patch edge (Lier, page 6, last paragraph teaches "This allows reusing the bounding volume’s x,y values of the corners, thus we only have to store the z value of the snapped vertices."); reusing x and y values of corners shows the new edge connects two existing patch vertices since bounding volume is aligned with patch vertices in various figures like fig. 3, 7, and 9.
Regarding claim 12, the combination of Lier, Muthler, Hanika and Huddy teaches wherein the subdividing preserves positions of all existing vertices within the patch (Lier, page 6, third paragraph teaches "The suggested alternative is utilizing the BVH only in its conventional sense and to preserve the vertex data of the finely tessellated mesh for the ad-hoc reconstruction of triangles during hierarchy traversal" and page, 6 last paragraph teaches "we set the reconstructed geometry to a specific thickness that conservatively bounds original vertex positions and suffices as an approximate surface representation."); preserving vertex data and keeping original vertex positions shows having preserved positions of all vertices within patch when subdividing.
Regarding claim 15, the combination of Lier, Muthler, Hanika and Huddy teaches wherein the axis-aligned bounding box is extended along one or more axes dependent on a maximum displacement of one or more primitives within the patch (Lier, page 8, fig. 8 description teaches "the displacement primarily affects the height of the bounding volumes" and page 8, paragraph 3 teaches "Nevertheless, we extend the z-range escaping the leaf-box"); this shows extending bounding box along z axis dependent on maximum displacement of primitive in patch.
Claim(s) 5-6 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over the combination of Lier, Muthler, Hanika and Huddy as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Woop et al. (U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2022/0051476), hereinafter referenced as Woop.
Regarding claim 5, the combination of Lier, Muthler, Hanika and Huddy fails to teach further comprising, prior to performing an intersection test between the ray and the primitive: identifying that one or more patch sub-units comprise a plurality of adjacent primitives; determining a primitive-group bounding volume that contains the plurality of adjacent primitives; and determining whether the ray intersects the primitive-group bounding volume.
However, Woop teaches further comprising, prior to performing an intersection test between the ray and the primitive: identifying that one or more patch sub-units comprise a plurality of adjacent primitives (Woop, paragraph 1014 teaches "a tesselator to tessellate an input patch to a grid primitive comprising a plurality of interconnected quads, each quad comprising two implicit triangles and sharing at least two vertices with an adjacent quad;"); this shows patch sub-unit/quad comprising two implicit triangles with shared vertices to adjacent quad (shows adjacent primitives) and this is prior to intersection test because its mentioned prior to the ray traversal hardware logic in the same paragraph; determining a primitive-group bounding volume that contains the plurality of adjacent primitives (Woop, paragraph 1014 teaches "a bounding box generator to construct a bounding box to bound each quad of the grid primitive to produce a plurality of bounding boxes corresponding to the plurality of interconnected quads;"); bounding box for each quad (which contains two triangles that would be adjacent as described above) means that two triangles/primitives that are adjacent are bounded as a group (quad contains plurality of adjacent primitives/triangles); and determining whether the ray intersects the primitive-group bounding volume (Woop, paragraph 1014 teaches "and ray traversal hardware logic to determine if a ray traverses one or more of the plurality of bounding boxes; and intersection hardware logic to process a bounding box traversed by the ray to determine if the ray intersects one of the implicit triangles"); this shows determining if ray intersects the aforementioned group bounding volume. Woop is considered to be analogous art because it is reasonably pertinent to the problem faced by the inventor of tessellating with efficiency and grouping adjacent primitives such as triangles in bounding box/volume. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the combination of Lier, Muthler, Hanika and Huddy with the bounding volume of primitives’ techniques of Woop to improve the efficiency with which operations are performed on graphics primitives and other graphics objects (Woop, paragraph 387). this would be done by determining bounding volume of primitive-group.
Regarding claim 6, the combination of Lier, Muthler, Hanika, Huddy and Woop teaches wherein the intersection test between the ray and the primitive is performed responsive to determining that the ray intersects the primitive- group bounding volume, and wherein the primitive is a primitive of the plurality of adjacent primitives (Woop, paragraph 680 teaches "ray tracing operations used for visibility queries rely on bounding volume hierarchies (BVHs) (or other 3D hierarchical arrangement) generated over the scene primitives (e.g., triangles, quads, etc) in a preprocessing phase. Using a BVH, the renderer can quickly determine the closest intersection point between a ray and a primitive", paragraph 703 teaches " BVH node 7700 is generated—one child node 7601A-I for each quad...When the hardware traversal unit 7710 determines that a ray traverses one of the bounding boxes 7601A-I, the same structure is passed to the ray-triangle intersector 7715 to determine which object/triangle within the bounding box has been hit. To determine if a bounding box has been hit, the ray data comprising a ray origin and ray direction is evaluated in view of the minimum and maximum coordinate values of each bounding box 7601A-I. If a bounding box has been hit by the ray, the ray-triangle intersector 7715 performs intersection tests by evaluating the ray data in view of the triangle coordinates for triangles contained in the bounding box." and paragraph 704 teaches "For each intersected bounding box 7601A-I, the two respective triangles are passed to ray-tracing triangle/quad intersection unit 7715 to perform the ray-triangle intersection tests."); this shows ray-triangle (primitive) intersection test being performed after ray passes 7601A-I/quad/primitive-group bounding box and Woop fig. 76 confirms (on top of aforementioned that quad contains adjacent triangles) the primitive/triangle in 7601A would be one of the adjacent triangle/primitives. The same motivations used in claim 5 apply here in claim 6.
Claim(s) 13-14 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over the combination of Lier, Muthler, Hanika and Huddy as applied to claim 7 above, and further in view of Burgess et al. (U.S. Patent No. 12,260,486), hereinafter referenced as Burgess.
Regarding claim 13, the combination of Lier, Muthler, Hanika and Huddy teaches wherein the displacement information comprises: normals associated with vertices of the patch which encode a displacement direction (Muthler, paragraph 305 teaches "Vertices may be, e.g., specified as a 4-coordinate vector (i.e., <x, y, z, w>) associated with one or more vertex attributes (e.g., color, texture coordinates, surface normal, etc.)."); surface normal indicates normals associated with vertices of patch and when applying displacement mapping from Lier, the normal would tell which way is out from the surface so the displacement would be mapped and encoded/compressed(from Lier title) in that direction.
However, the combination of Lier, Muthler, Hanika and Huddy fails to explicitly teach and displacement data which encodes a magnitude of displacement of the primitive.
However, Burgess explicitly teaches and displacement data which encodes a magnitude of displacement of the primitive (Burgess, abstract teaches "encoding vertex positions" and col. 6, lines 8-13 teach "each vertex specifies a displacement amount in the [0, 1] range (this may be conveniently represented using a UNORM representation such as UNORM11), which is used to linearly interpolate between the minimum and maximum triangles to generate a displaced vertex location for the triangle vertices."); this shows displacement data (encoded vertex position) including magnitude/displacement amount for each vertex (inclusive of primitive vertices). Burgess is considered to be analogous art because it is reasonably pertinent to the problem faced by the inventor of having encoded displacement data which gives magnitude of displacement of micro-meshes/primitives. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the combination of Lier, Muthler, Hanika and Huddy with the displacement data and magnitude techniques of Burgess to provide advantages and improvements to real time and other ray and path tracing—in particular, a highly compressed, hierarchical representation that enables localized ray tracing subdivision and processing while guaranteeing bit-for-bit microtriangle microvertex precision on edges shared with other primitives and thus watertightness (Burgess, col. 33, lines 32-37).
Regarding claim 14, the combination of Lier, Muthler, Hanika, Huddy and Burgess teaches wherein the displacement data is predetermined (Burgess, col. 38, lines 37-38 teach "predetermined barycentric grid coordinates defining the mesh" and abstract teaches "hierarchical representation implicitly encodes vertex positions of a triangle micro-mesh based on a barycentric grid, and enables microvertex displacements to be encoded efficiently"); since hierarchical representations are based on predetermined barycentric grid and the hierarchical representations enable displacements to be encoded, the displacements are also predetermined (barycentric grid with predetermined coordinates is used for and in relation to the displacements); and comprises a respective displacement map for each level of subdivision obtainable within the patch (Burgess, col. 33, lines 7-10 teach "displacement mapping is thus used to specify how to displace each microtriangle relative to the base triangle. This allows the mesh to define the equivalent of a raised 3D relief map" and col. 33, lines 15-19 teach "such displacements can be used to define the equivalent of a 3D relief map of arbitrary complexity (the complexity being determined by the coarse or fine size of the microtriangles and thus by the subdivision level discussed above)"); this shows displacement map and relief map dependent on each microtriangle (and thus each subdivision level). The same motivations used in claim 13 apply here in claim 14.
Claim(s) 17-18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over the combination of Lier, Muthler, Hanika and Huddy as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Woop and Lacey et al. (US 2019/0156572), hereinafter referenced as Lacey.
Regarding claim 17, the combination of Lier, Muthler, Hanika and Huddy fails to teach wherein the tessellation indications comprise tessellation factors and a tessellation threshold, wherein each vertex of a plurality of vertices within the patch is associated with a tessellation factor.
However, Woop teaches wherein the tessellation indications comprise tessellation factors and a tessellation threshold, (Woop, paragraph 721 teaches "a QBVH8 node requires 72 bytes while an uncompressed BVH8 node requires 192 bytes, which results in reduction factor of 2.66×. With 8 (64 bit) pointers the reduction factor reduces to 1.88×," and paragraph 637 teaches "One embodiment uses a fixed number of primitives to act as a threshold value."); reduction factor shows tessellation factors and fixed number of primitives as threshold value shows tessellation threshold. The same motivations used in claim 5 apply here in claim 17.
However, the combination of Lier, Muthler, Hanika, Huddy and Woop fails to teach wherein each vertex of a plurality of vertices within the patch is associated with a tessellation factor.
However, Lacey teaches wherein each vertex of a plurality of vertices within the patch is associated with a tessellation factor (Lacey, paragraph 6 teaches "A tessellation method is described which uses both vertex tessellation factors and displacement factors defined for each vertex of a patch which may be a quad, a triangle or an isoline"); this shows tessellation factors for each vertex in a patch. Lacey is considered to be analogous art because it is reasonably pertinent to the problem faced by the inventor of tessellation factors and having it for each vertex. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the combination of Lier, Muthler, Hanika, Huddy and Woop with the tessellation factors techniques of Lacey to ensure an improved method for determining parameters of vertices (Lacey, paragraph 61). This would be done by having factors for each of the vertices.
Regarding claim 18, the combination of Lier, Muthler, Hanika, Huddy, Woop and Lacey teaches further comprising, following a subdivision of the patch or sub-patch, calculating updated tessellation factors for each of the plurality of vertices and for any newly formed vertex formed as a result of the subdivision (Lacey, paragraph 62 teaches "sub-divides an edge connecting two existing vertices into two parts (which in some examples may be equal parts such that the new vertex bisects the edge). A newly added vertex may be referred to as the child vertex and the two existing vertices may be referred to as the parent vertices. These tessellation factors for vertices are referred to as ‘vertex tessellation factors’ to distinguish them from the edge tessellation factors used in the known methods described above and an example tessellation method which uses vertex tessellation factors is described below" and paragraph 109 teaches "All five tessellation factors (i.e. TLEFT.TF, TRIGHT.TF, BRIGHT.TF, BLEFT.TF and MID.TF) are then reduced by the parameter INTERVAL (i.e. by subtracting INTERVAL where log base 2 notation is used) as some tessellation has occurred (block 908)"); this happens after subdividing, newly added vertices would require tessellation factors since each vertex has tessellation factor from above as explained in claim 17, and reducing tessellation factors by a parameter shows calculating updated tessellation factors. The same motivations used in claim 17 apply here in claim 18.
Claim(s) 19-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lier in view of Muthler, Hanika, Huddy and Woop.
Regarding claim 19, the tessellation unit claim 19 recites similar limitations as method claim 1, and thus is rejected under similar rationale. In addition, the combination of Lier, Muthler, Hanika and Huddy teaches comprising volume intersection testing logic, tessellation logic (Lier, page 1, second paragraph teaches "caching fully tessellated...efficient intersection computations");
and primitive intersection testing logic (Muthler, fig. 4, reference 520 teaches a ray-primitive intersection test).
However, the combination of Lier, Muthler, Hanika and Huddy fails to explicitly teach hardware tessellation unit for use in a ray tracing system.
However, Woop teaches hardware tessellation unit for use in a ray tracing system, (Woop, paragraph 701 and fig. 75 teach hardware tessellation unit 7550 for ray tracing system). The same motivations used in claim 5 apply here in claim 19.
Regarding claim 20, the non-transitory computer readable storage medium claim 20 recites similar limitations as tessellation unit claim 19, and thus is rejected under similar rationale. In addition, Woop teaches a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having stored thereon a computer readable dataset description of an integrated circuit that, when processed in an integrated circuit manufacturing system, configures the integrated circuit manufacturing system to manufacture a hardware tessellation unit (Woop, paragraph 1040 teaches "hardware such as application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) configured to perform certain operations or having a predetermined functionality or software instructions stored in memory embodied in a non-transitory computer readable medium. Thus, the techniques shown in the figures can be implemented using code and data stored and executed on one or more electronic devices (e.g., an end station, a network element, etc.)"); one of ordinary skill in the art would understand that in addition to configuring the non-transitory computer readable storage medium with instructions of a circuit to configure a circuit, using the tessellation instructions/program/code/configurations of claim 19, a hardware tessellation unit would need to be configured before deployed for use. The same motivations used in claim 19 apply here in claim 20.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 16 objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Regarding claim 16, the closest prior art of (or combination of) Muthler teaches further comprising, prior to transforming the patch and the ray into the patch-aligned space-coordinate system: determining that the ray intersects with an object-space axis-aligned bounding box, (Muthler, paragraph 63 teaches "acceleration data structure most commonly used by modern ray tracers is a bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) comprising nested axis-aligned bounding boxes (AABBs)" and paragraph 122 teaches "Traversal logic 712 is directed by results of a ray-complet test block 710 that tests intersections between the ray indicated by the ray management block 730 and volumetric subdivisions represented by the BVH, using instance transforms as needed"); transforms occur after as stated and the ray intersection test occurs on BVH which has axis-aligned bounding boxes with patches thus makes this object-space axis-aligned bounding box;
However, Muthler fails to teach wherein the object-space axis-aligned bounding box is arranged to contain a patch- oriented bounding volume;
However, the closest prior art of (or combination of) Chajdas et al. (US 11,854,138), hereinafter referenced as Chajdas, teaches wherein the object-space axis-aligned bounding box is arranged to contain a patch- oriented bounding volume (Chajdas, claim 1 teaches "modifying the bounding volume hierarchy by performing one of converting the child nodes into oriented bounding box nodes"); this means bounding box (object-space axis-aligned) from Muthler would convert child bounding boxes to oriented bounding volumes.
However, Muthler and Chajdas fails to teach and responsive to determining that the ray intersects with the object-space axis-aligned bounding box, transforming the patch, the ray, and the patch-oriented bounding volume into the patch-aligned space-coordinate system.
Furthermore, no prior art of record either alone or in combination teaches
and responsive to determining that the ray intersects with the object-space axis-aligned bounding box, transforming the patch, the ray, and the patch-oriented bounding volume into the patch-aligned space-coordinate system, when read in light of the rest of the limitations in claim 16 and the claims to which claim 16 depends and thus claim 16 contains allowable subject matter.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Benthin (U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2018/0293782) fig. 18 teaches testing for intersections t step 1802 then tessellating if intersection found (in steps 1804-1805).
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/N.U.A./ Examiner, Art Unit 2611
/KEE M TUNG/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2611
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