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
The office action is in response to Applicant’s amendment filed 01/27/2026 which has been entered and made of record. Claims 1-3, 8-10 and 15-17 have been amended. No claim has been newly added. Claims 1-20 are pending in the application. Applicant's amendments to claim 15 has overcome each and every objection previously set forth in the Non-Final Office Action mailed 10/27/2025.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, filed 01/27/2026, with respect to the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 103 have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Lee, Burgess and Anton as fully explained below.
Applicant argues:
1. Lee des not teach the previously claimed low LOD object and the newly amended limitation of adjusted displacement with varying magnitude and direction;
2. Lee’s displacement model is static;
3. Lee does not contemplate scenario in which displacement direction must be reinterpreted or reversed;
4. Lee does not store displacement in association with discrete sub-portions. Examiner respectfully disagrees:
1. Lee does teach the smooth domain surface 5e in Figure 5 as the previously claimed low LOD object. At Page 4, Left column, First paragraph, Lee teaches 5a as the original detailed mesh (High LOD object), 5c and 5d as the control mesh simplified from the original detailed mesh, and 5e is the smooth domain surface based on the simplified control mesh. As for the newly amended limitation of adjusted displacement with varying magnitude and direction, examiner agrees Lee does not teach the new limitation, however, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Lee, Burgess and Anton as fully explained below.
2. Examiner agrees Lee’s displacement model is static. However, according to the specification of the instant application, paragraph [0055] “Additionally, the generation of the adjustment displacements, such as adjustment displacement 850, occurs only once, which is done during sequence 3”, the application’s displacement model is also static.
3. Examiner agrees Lee does not contemplate scenario in which displacement direction must be reinterpreted or reversed. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Lee, Burgess and Anton as fully explained below.
4. Lee does teach storing displacement in association with discrete sub portions. Lee teaches using the (u, v) texture coordinates as the unique identifier for a given portion of the low LOD object in Page 3, Right column, Last paragraph, “one could define more traditional surface parameterizations by explicitly specifying (u,v) texture coordinates at the vertices of the control mesh, as in [11]. However, since the domain of a (u,v) parameterization is a planar region, this generally requires segmenting the surface into a set of charts”.
Applicant argues Burgess does not teach the newly amended limitation.
Examiner agrees. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Lee, Burgess and Anton as fully explained below.
Applicant argues neither Lee nor Burgess identifies the problem addressed by the application, there is no articulated reason to combine Lee with Burgess.
Examiner respectfully disagrees. Both Lee and Burges are in the same field of endeavor as the instant application. Lee teaches the details about how to calculate displacement map, Burgess teaches how to use the displacement map, it would have been obvious for a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of these two.
Applicant argues for claim 2, Lee's signed displacement indicates orientation relative to a smooth subdivision surface (Lee, Fig. 5f), not relative to a low-LOD object. Burgess does not disclose an explicit directional component used to reinterpret displacement direction.
Examiner respectfully disagrees. Lee’s smooth subdivision surface is a low LOD object, please see above page 3 for detailed reason. Examiner agrees Burgess does not teach the directional component of displacement map.
Applicant argues for claim 3, neither Lee nor Burgess teaches attenuating displacement magnitude relative to a low-LOD displacement model in the claimed manner.
Examiner respectfully disagrees. The amended claim 3 recites “the adjusted displacement has a first magnitude that is less than a second magnitude of a displacement defined with respect to the given sub-portion of the low LOD object”, Lee does teach multiple intersection points along the normal, which implies multiple adjusted displacement, and choosing the smallest one, Page 5, Left Column, Fifth paragraph, “The directed line formed by the point and normal is intersected with the original surface, using a spatial hierarchy [17] for efficiency …… If multiple intersection points remain, we pick the one closest to the domain surface.”.
Applicant argues for claim 4 and 5, neither Lee nor Burgess teaches maintaining an adjusted displacement derived from a curved proxy surface comparison, particularly where the displacement may change direction relative to a low-LOD object.
Examiner respectfully disagrees. Burgess teaches maintaining adjustment displacement to achieve special animation effect in paragraph 0245. Lee teaches explicitly generating the curved surface and the first point based on coarse control mesh, and further teach the modified control mesh for animation in Figure 12. Examiner agrees Lee and Burgess do not teach the direction changing displacement map. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Lee, Burgess and Anton as fully explained below.
Applicant argues for claim 6 and 7, Krishnamurthy does not disclose or suggest using a curved surface as a proxy above a low-LOD object to reinterpret displacement direction, or combining such a surface with a displacement correction framework as recited in amended claim 1.
Examiner agrees. Krishnamurthy does not teach a curved surface as a proxy above a low-LOD object. However, Lee teaches using a curved surface as a proxy above a low-LOD object, and a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Lee, Burgess and Anton as fully explained below.
Conclusions: The rejections set in the previous Office Action are shown to have been proper, and the claims are rejected below. New citations and parenthetical remarks can be considered new grounds of rejection and such new grounds of rejection are necessitated by the Applicant's amendments to the claims. Therefore, the present Office Action is made final.
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.
Claim(s) 1-5, 8-12 and 15-19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over NPL Lee et al. (“Displaced Subdivision Surfaces”), hereinafter as Lee, in view of Burgess et al. (US 20230081791 A1), hereinafter as Burgess, further in view of Anton Dominguez et al. (US 20220343582 A1), hereinafter as Anton.
Regarding claim 1, Lee teaches ……partition or subdivide a portion of a surface of a low level of detail (LOD) object, corresponding to a high LOD object, into a plurality of sub-portions (Lee teaches a high LOD object mesh in Figure 5a, a low LOD object of control mesh in Figure 5c, and further teaches a smooth domain surface object formed by subdivision surface in Figure 1b and Figure 5e. Page 4, Figure 5, Left Column, First paragraph, “To convert an arbitrary triangle mesh (Figure 5a) into a displaced subdivision surface (Figure 5b), our process performs the following steps: Obtain an initial control mesh (Figure 5c) by simplifying the original mesh.” And Page 1, Figure 1, Right Column, Fourth paragraph, “We instead define the domain surface using subdivision surfaces, since these can represent smooth surfaces of arbitrary topological type without requiring control point constraints. Our representation, the displaced subdivision surface, consists of a control mesh and a scalar field that displaces the associated subdivision surface locally along its normal (see Figure 1).”);
generate a displacement comprising a first point at which a normal vector corresponding to a given sub-portion, of the plurality of sub-portions, intersects a curved surface or curved surface representation above the given sub-portion (Lee teaches the limit point
P
→
on the smooth domain surface as the first point on the curved surface, and further teaches the smooth domain surface as the curved surface above the given sub-portion of mesh in Figure 9. In addition, Lee teaches how to define the normal vector
n
→
at the first point, the normal vector intersects the smooth domain surface as first point of
P
→
.
Page 3, Left Column, Last paragraph, “We now derive the surface normal for a point
S
→
on the displaced subdivision surface. Let
S
→
be the displacement of the limit point
P
→
on the domain surface:
s
→
=
P
→
+
D
n
^
, where D is the limit displacement and
n
^
=
n
→
/
n
→
is the unit normal on the domain surface. The normal
n
→
is obtained as
n
→
=
P
→
u
×
P
→
v
where the tangent vectors
P
→
u
and
P
→
v
are computed using the first derivative masks in Figure 3.”. Page 7, Left Column, Figure 9 shows a smooth domain surface as the finely subdivided surface above the face of a coarse tessellation);
generate an adjusted displacement along the normal vector based on a difference between the first point and a second point at which the normal vector intersects a surface of the high LOD object (Lee Page 5, Left Column, Fifth paragraph, “We seek to compute the signed distance from the limit point to the original surface along the normal (Figure 5f). The directed line formed by the point and normal is intersected with the original surface, using a spatial hierarchy [17] for efficiency.” And Page 4, Left Column, First paragraph, “Sample the displacement map by shooting rays along the domain surface normals until they intersect the original mesh. At the ray intersection points, compute the signed displacement”) ……
and store, in memory or a storage structure, the adjustment displacement in association with an identifier that uniquely identifies the given sub-portion among the plurality of sub-portions (Lee teaches storing displacement map as bump map or texture, and use domain surface parameter or (u , v) texture coordinates as the unique identifier, the (u, v) coordinates also defines a sub-portion, Page 3, Right Column, Paragraph 2-4, “The displacement map may also be used to generate a bump map during the rendering of coarser tessellations (see Figure 13). This improves rendering performance on graphics systems where geometry processing is a bottleneck…… The domain surface parameterization is used for storing the displacement map (which also serves to define a bump map)…… Alternatively, one could define more traditional surface parameterizations by explicitly specifying (u,v) texture coordinates at the vertices of the control mesh, as in [11]. However, since the domain of a (u,v) parameterization is a planar region, this generally requires segmenting the surface into a set of charts”).
Lee fails to teach An apparatus comprising: circuitry configured to:…… wherein the adjusted displacement is configured to vary in magnitude and direction relative to a displacement defined with respect to the low LOD object …… Burgess teaches An apparatus comprising: circuitry configured to:…… (Burgess paragraph [0125] “FIG. 1 illustrates an example interactive real time ray and/or path tracing graphics system 100 for generating images using three dimensional (3D) data of a scene or object(s). System 100 includes an input device 110 , a processor(s) 120 , a graphics processing unit(s) (GPU(s)) 130 , memory 140 , and a display(s) 150.” And paragraph [0006] “Still more particularly, the technology herein relates to a new primitive type—the Displaced Micro-mesh (DMM) and associated acceleration data structures and hardware circuitry—that enables high complexity geometry while minimizing the associated builder costs and preserving high efficiency ray and path tracing.”).
Lee and Burgess are in the same field endeavor, namely computer graphics, especially in the field of using displacement map to model high level of details mesh object. Burgess teaches a method of using displacement map for micro vertex based on minimum and maximum scalar value to save memory and improve speed (paragraph [0238] “ the present technology provides a new application of displacement maps to micro triangle meshes that provides 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 micro triangle micro vertex precision on edges shared with other primitives and thus watertightness.”). Therefore, it would have been obvious for a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Burgess with the method of Lee to save memory and improve speed.
Lee in view of Burgess fail to teach ……wherein the adjusted displacement is configured to vary in magnitude and direction relative to a displacement defined with respect to the low LOD object …… Anton teaches ……wherein the adjusted displacement is configured to vary in magnitude and direction relative to a displacement defined with respect to the low LOD object …… (Anton teaches multi resolution displacement maps, the positive and negative direction of the displacement values, and choosing different resolution of displacement map for 3D mesh model, implicitly teaches the varying magnitude and direction of adjusted displacement, paragraph [0009] “The displacement map may be a 2D array of displacement values that may be interpreted to modify in a positive or negative direction on a surface feature.” And paragraph [0029-0033] “the processor 204 may generate the lower resolution version 218 of the displacement map 212, 216……The magnitudes of the displacement vectors 304 at the vertices 306 of the triangle 302 may correspond to the displacement values identified in the displacement map 212, 216 for the locations of the vertices 306…… The processor 204 may make similar displacement magnitude determinations for the remaining triangles in the UV-mapped version of the lower resolution version 218.”)
Lee, Burgess and Anton are in the same field endeavor, namely computer graphics, especially in the field of using displacement map to model high level of details mesh object. Anton teaches a method of using multi resolution displacement maps to save memory and improve speed (Anton paragraph [0011] “ A technical improvement afforded by the features of the present disclosure may thus be that storage space used to store the 3D mesh model may be reduced, which may reduce wasted space usage as well as computational resource usage in processing the 3D mesh model.”). Therefore, it would have been obvious for a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Anton with the method of Lee and Burgess to save memory and improve speed.
Regarding claim 2, Lee in view of Burgess and Anton teach The apparatus as recited in claim 1, and further teach wherein the circuitry is further configured to store the adjustment displacement with an explicit directional component and a magnitude, the directional component indicating displacement orientation relative to the low LOD object (Lee teaches the normal direction as the explicit directional component to the low LOD object, further teaches D below as the magnitude of the adjustment displacement, Figure 5f, Page 4, Left Column, First paragraph, “Sample the displacement map by shooting rays along the domain surface normals until they intersect the original mesh. At the ray intersection points, compute the signed displacement, and optionally sample other appearance attributes like surface color. (The black line segments visible in Figure 5f correspond to rays with positive displacements.), Page 3, Left Column, Last paragraph, “We now derive the surface normal for a point
S
→
on the displaced subdivision surface. Let
S
→
be the displacement of the limit point
P
→
on the domain surface:
s
→
=
P
→
+
D
n
^
, where D is the limit displacement and
n
^
=
n
→
/
n
→
is the unit normal on the domain surface.”).
Regarding claim 3, Lee in view of Burgess and Anton teach The apparatus as recited in claim 2, and further teach wherein the adjustment displacement has a first magnitude that is less than a second magnitude of a displacement defined with respect to the given sub-portion of the low LOD object (Lee teaches multiple intersection points along the normal between the domain surface and the original surface, each intersection point has a magnitude value based on the distance along the normal; Lee further teaches choosing the intersection point with the smallest magnitude. Page 5, Left Column, Fifth paragraph, “The directed line formed by the point and normal is intersected with the original surface, using a spatial hierarchy [17] for efficiency …… If multiple intersection points remain, we pick the one closest to the domain surface.”).
Regarding claim 4, Lee in view of Burgess and Anton teach The apparatus as recited in claim 2, and further teach wherein responsive to an update of a position of the given sub-portion, the circuitry is further configured to: generate updated values for the curved surface, the normal vector, and the first point; and maintain the adjustment displacement (Burgess teaches maintaining adjustment displacement to achieve special animation effect. Burgess does not explicitly teach the updated curved surface and the first point on the surface, However, Lee teaches generating the curved surface and the first point based on coarse control mesh, and further teach the modified control mesh for animation in Figure 12, it would have been obvious for a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Burgess with the method of Lee. Burgess Paragraph [0245] “changing the position(s) of the base triangle vertex/vertices and/or changing the direction(s) of the base triangle's direction vector(s) results in changing the shape of the micro-mesh the primitive defines. As explained below, interesting animation effects can be created by changing the direction vectors and/or the base triangle vertex positions over time such as between frames while keeping other parameters (e.g., displacement amounts) static.”. Lee Page 5, Left Column, Third paragraph, “Note that this geometric optimization modifies the control mesh and thus affects the space of normals over the domain surface.”, Page 10, Figure 12, “The control mesh makes a convenient armature for animating the displaced subdivision surface.”).
Lee, Burgess and Anton are in the same field endeavor, namely computer graphics, especially in the field of using displacement map to model high level of details mesh object. Burgess teaches a method of using displacement map for micro vertex based on minimum and maximum scalar value to save memory and improve speed (paragraph [0238] “ the present technology provides a new application of displacement maps to micro triangle meshes that provides 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 micro triangle micro vertex precision on edges shared with other primitives and thus watertightness.”). Therefore, it would have been obvious for a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Burgess with the method of Lee and Anton to save memory and improve speed.
Regarding claim 5, Lee in view of Burgess and Anton teach The apparatus as recited in claim 4, and further teach wherein the circuitry is further configured to generate a third point at which the normal vector intersects a surface of a representation of the high LOD object by summing the first point and the adjustment displacement (Lee define
P
→
as the first point,
S
→
as the third point, D as the adjustment displacement, Page 3, Left Column, Last paragraph, “We now derive the surface normal for a point
S
→
on the displaced subdivision surface. Let
S
→
be the displacement of the limit point
P
→
on the domain surface:
s
→
=
P
→
+
D
n
^
, where D is the limit displacement and
n
^
is the unit normal on the domain surface.” And Page 4, Left Column, first paragraph, “Sample the displacement map by shooting rays along the domain surface normals until they intersect the original mesh. At the ray intersection points, compute the signed displacement”).
Regarding claim 8, it recites similar limitations of claim 1 but in a method by circuitry form. The rationale of claim 1 rejection is applied to reject claim 8. In addition, Burgess teaches A method, ……, by circuitry (Burgess paragraph [0117] “the technology herein in one embodiment employs a micro-mesh primitive that encodes a micro-mesh including micro triangles and their displacements. The encoded displacement information enables the system to interpolate micro triangle positions between minimum and maximum triangular planar surfaces also defined by the micro-mesh primitive to create a displacement mapped polygon micro-mesh that can be efficiently subdivided and tested in real time (e.g., 30 or 60 frames per second) by ray and path tracing hardware.”).
Lee, Burgess and Anton are in the same field endeavor, namely computer graphics, especially in the field of using displacement map to model high level of details mesh object. Burgess teaches a method of using displacement map for micro vertex based on minimum and maximum scalar value to save memory and improve speed (paragraph [0238] “ the present technology provides a new application of displacement maps to micro triangle meshes that provides 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 micro triangle micro vertex precision on edges shared with other primitives and thus watertightness.”). Therefore, it would have been obvious for a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Burgess with the method of Lee and Anton to save memory and improve speed.
Regarding claim 9, claim 9 has similar limitations as claim 2, therefore it is rejected under the same rationale as claim 2.
Regarding claim 10, claim 10 has similar limitations as claim 3, therefore it is rejected under the same rationale as claim 3.
Regarding claim 11, claim 11 has similar limitations as claim 4, therefore it is rejected under the same rationale as claim 4.
Regarding claim 12, claim 12 has similar limitations as claim 5, therefore it is rejected under the same rationale as claim 5.
Regarding claim 15, Lee teaches …… receive a low level of detail (LOD) object corresponding to a high LOD object; partition or subdivide a portion of a surface of the low LOD object into a plurality of sub-portions; generate a curved surface or curved surface representation for a given sub-portion of the plurality of sub-portions (Lee teaches a high LOD object mesh in Figure 5a, a low LOD object of control mesh in Figure 5c, and further teaches a smooth domain surface object formed by subdivision surface in Figure 1b and Figure 5e. Page 4, Figure 5, Left Column, First paragraph, “To convert an arbitrary triangle mesh (Figure 5a) into a displaced subdivision surface (Figure 5b), our process performs the following steps: Obtain an initial control mesh (Figure 5c) by simplifying the original mesh.” And Page 1, Figure 1, Right Column, Fourth paragraph, “We instead define the domain surface using subdivision surfaces, since these can represent smooth surfaces of arbitrary topological type without requiring control point constraints. Our representation, the displaced subdivision surface, consists of a control mesh and a scalar field that displaces the associated subdivision surface locally along its normal (see Figure 1).”);
generate a normal vector corresponding to the given sub-portion (Lee Page 3, Left Column, Last paragraph, “
n
^
=
n
→
/
n
→
is the unit normal on the domain surface. The normal
n
→
is obtained as
n
→
=
P
→
u
×
P
→
v
where the tangent vectors
P
→
u
and
P
→
v
are computed using the first derivative masks in Figure 3. And Page 3, Right Column, Figure 3, “Loop masks for limit position P and first and second derivatives at a regular control vertex.”);
generate a first point at which the normal vector intersects the curved surface (Lee teaches the limit point
P
→
on the smooth domain surface as the first point on the curved surface, and further teaches the normal vector
n
→
, the normal vector intersects the smooth domain surface as first point of
P
→
.
Page 3, Left Column, Last paragraph, “We now derive the surface normal for a point
S
→
on the displaced subdivision surface. Let
S
→
be the displacement of the limit point
P
→
on the domain surface:
s
→
=
P
→
+
D
n
^
, where D is the limit displacement and
n
^
=
n
→
/
n
→
is the unit normal on the domain surface. The normal
n
→
is obtained as
n
→
=
P
→
u
×
P
→
v
where the tangent vectors
P
→
u
and
P
→
v
are computed using the first derivative masks in Figure 3”);
generate an adjustment displacement along the normal vector based on a difference between the first point and a second point at which the normal vector intersects a surface of the high LOD object (Lee Page 5, Left Column, Fifth paragraph, “We seek to compute the signed distance from the limit point to the original surface along the normal (Figure 5f). The directed line formed by the point and normal is intersected with the original surface, using a spatial hierarchy [17] for efficiency.” And Page 4, Left Column, First paragraph, “Sample the displacement map by shooting rays along the domain surface normals until they intersect the original mesh. At the ray intersection points, compute the signed displacement”); ……
and store, in memory or a storage structure, the adjustment displacement in association with an identifier that uniquely identifies the given sub-portion among the plurality of sub-portions (Lee teaches storing displacement map as bump map or texture, and use domain surface parameter or (u , v) texture coordinates as the unique identifier, the (u, v) coordinates also defines a sub-portion, Page 3, Right Column, Paragraph 2-4, “The displacement map may also be used to generate a bump map during the rendering of coarser tessellations (see Figure 13). This improves rendering performance on graphics systems where geometry processing is a bottleneck…… The domain surface parameterization is used for storing the displacement map (which also serves to define a bump map)…… Alternatively, one could define more traditional surface parameterizations by explicitly specifying (u,v) texture coordinates at the vertices of the control mesh, as in [11].”).
Lee fails to teach A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising program instructions executable by circuitry to: …… wherein the adjusted displacement is configured to vary in magnitude and direction relative to a displacement defined with respect to the low LOD object …… Burgess teaches A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising program instructions executable by circuitry to: (Burgess paragraph [0206] “FIG. 9 shows an AS construction process, which may be specified by a set of instructions stored in non-transitory memory and executed by a processor such as a CPU and/or a GPU such as shown in FIG. 1.” And paragraph [0125] “FIG. 1 illustrates an example interactive real time ray and/or path tracing graphics system 100 for generating images using three dimensional (3D) data of a scene or object(s). System 100 includes an input device 110, a processor(s) 120, a graphics processing unit(s) (GPU(s)) 130, memory 140, and a display(s) 150.”).
Lee and Burgess are in the same field endeavor, namely computer graphics, especially in the field of using displacement map to model high level of details mesh object. Burgess teaches a method of using displacement map for micro vertex based on minimum and maximum scalar value to save memory and improve speed (paragraph [0238] “ the present technology provides a new application of displacement maps to micro triangle meshes that provides 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 micro triangle micro vertex precision on edges shared with other primitives and thus watertightness.”). Therefore, it would have been obvious for a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Burgess with the method of Lee to save memory and improve speed.
Lee in view of Burgess fail to teach …… wherein the adjusted displacement is configured to vary in magnitude and direction relative to a displacement defined with respect to the low LOD object …… Anton teaches ……wherein the adjusted displacement is configured to vary in magnitude and direction relative to a displacement defined with respect to the low LOD object …… (Anton teaches multi resolution displacement map, the positive and negative direction of the displacement values, and choosing different resolution of displacement map for 3D mesh model, implicitly teaches the varying magnitude and direction of adjusted displacement, paragraph [0009] “The displacement map may be a 2D array of displacement values that may be interpreted to modify in a positive or negative direction on a surface feature.” And paragraph [0029-0033] “the processor 204 may generate the lower resolution version 218 of the displacement map 212, 216……The magnitudes of the displacement vectors 304 at the vertices 306 of the triangle 302 may correspond to the displacement values identified in the displacement map 212, 216 for the locations of the vertices 306…… The processor 204 may make similar displacement magnitude determinations for the remaining triangles in the UV-mapped version of the lower resolution version 218.”)
Lee, Burgess and Anton are in the same field endeavor, namely computer graphics, especially in the field of using displacement map to model high level of details mesh object. Anton teaches a method of using multi resolution displacement maps to save memory and improve speed (Anton paragraph [0011] “ A technical improvement afforded by the features of the present disclosure may thus be that storage space used to store the 3D mesh model may be reduced, which may reduce wasted space usage as well as computational resource usage in processing the 3D mesh model.”). Therefore, it would have been obvious for a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Anton with the method of Lee and Burgess to save memory and improve speed.
Regarding claim 16, claim 16 has similar limitations as claim 2, therefore it is rejected under the same rationale as claim 2.
Regarding claim 17, claim 17 has similar limitations as claim 3, therefore it is rejected under the same rationale as claim 3.
Regarding claim 18, claim 18 has similar limitations as claim 4, therefore it is rejected under the same rationale as claim 4.
Regarding claim 19, claim 19 has similar limitations as claim 5, therefore it is rejected under the same rationale as claim 5.
Claim(s) 6-7, 13-14 and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over NPL Lee et al. (“Displaced Subdivision Surfaces”), hereinafter as Lee, in view of Burgess et al. (US 20230081791 A1), hereinafter as Burgess, further in view of Anton Dominguez et al. (US 20220343582 A1), hereinafter as Anton, and NPL Krishnamurthy et al. (“Fitting Smooth Surfaces to Dense Polygon Meshes”), hereinafter as Krishnamurthy.
Regarding claim 6, Lee in view of Burgess and Anton teach The apparatus as recited in claim 1, but fail to teach wherein to generate the curved surface, the circuitry is further configured to generate a curved height field for the given sub-portion. Krishnamurthy teaches wherein to generate the curved surface, the circuitry is further configured to generate a curved height field for the given sub-portion (Krishnamurthy teaches a B-spline surface representation as the curved height field for patch based spring mesh. It would have been obvious for a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to substitute the smooth domain function of Lee with the B-spline surface of Krishnamurthy. Page 1, Left Column, Second paragraph, “Our resampling algorithm lays a grid of springs across the polygon mesh, then iterates between relaxing this grid and subdividing it. This grid provides a parameterization for the mesh section, which is initially unparameterized. Finally, we fit a tensor product B-spline surface to the grid. We also output a displacement map for each mesh section, which represents the error between our fitted surface and the spring grid.”).
Lee, Burgess, Anton and Krishnamurthy are in the same field endeavor, namely computer graphics, especially in the field of using displacement map to model high level of details mesh object. Krishnamurthy teaches a method of converting dense irregular polygon meshes of arbitrary topology into tensor product B-spline surface patches with accompanying displacement map to improve animation speed (Krishnamurthy Page 1, Left Column, first paragraph [0238] “ This choice of representation yields a coarse but efficient model suitable for animation and a fine but more expensive model suitable for rendering.”). Therefore, it would have been obvious for a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Krishnamurthy with the method of Lee, Burgess and Anton to improve animation speed.
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Regarding claim 7, Lee in view of Burgess, Anton and Krishnamurthy teach The apparatus as recited in claim 6, and further teach wherein to generate the first point, the circuitry is further configured to generate a height value using the curved height field and the normal vector (Krishnamurthy teaches using the (u, v) parameter value in the surface function to decide a height value, the (u, v) value also defines the normal vector, further defines the first point on the curved surface, Page 4, Left Column, first paragraph, “The equation for a B-spline surface
P
→
u
,
v
can be written as:
where
P
→
is a point in 3-space, u and v are parameter values in the two parametric directions of the surface” and Page 7, Left column, fourth paragraph, “A typical formulation for a bivariate parametric surface, such as a B-spline is: given a point P (u; v) on the surface, a displacement map is a function d(u; v) giving a perturbation of the point P in space. In general d can be a vector or a scalar……In the second case, the new position of the point is usually interpreted as P + N^ d, where N^ represents the surface normal at (u, v).”).
Lee, Burgess, Anton and Krishnamurthy are in the same field endeavor, namely computer graphics, especially in the field of using displacement map to model high level of details mesh object. Krishnamurthy teaches a method of converting dense irregular polygon meshes of arbitrary topology into tensor product B-spline surface patches with accompanying displacement map to improve animation speed (Krishnamurthy Page 1, Left Column, first paragraph [0238] “ This choice of representation yields a coarse but efficient model suitable for animation and a fine but more expensive model suitable for rendering.”). Therefore, it would have been obvious for a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Krishnamurthy with the method of Lee, Burgess and Anton to improve animation speed.
Regarding claim 13, claim 13 has similar limitations as claim 6, therefore it is rejected under the same rationale as claim 6.
Regarding claim 14, claim 14 has similar limitations as claim 7, therefore it is rejected under the same rationale as claim 7.
Regarding claim 20, claim 20 has similar limitations as claim 6, therefore it is rejected under the same rationale as claim 6.
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.
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/XIAOMING WEI/Examiner, Art Unit 2611
/KEE M TUNG/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2611