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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention.
Claim 1, 10, and 19, each recites the limitations "generating a ray representative of an area of a tile of a shade space texture; and casting the ray into a scene of light volumes to generate a set of lights that contribute to shading operations of the tile.” As the generated ray representative of an area of a tile of a shade space texture, in view of claim 3 and Fig. 10 below, it is not clear on how to cast that generated light represented the tile area into the scene of light sources and generate a set of lights to determine shading of the tile.
Claim 3 recites the limitations “generating the ray comprises generating one of a ray that extends from the center of the tile, a ray that extends between corners of the tile, generating two rays that cross within the tile, and generating a set of rays that enclose an area of the tile.” It is unclear as there are multiple occurrences of “a ray” and “rays”. It is unclear to what is “generating one of a ray”.
All dependent claims are also rejected based on their dependency of the defected parent claims.
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 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.
Claims 1-2, 4-11 and 13-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over O’Donnell (Tiled Light Trees) in view of Hunt (US 20190318528).
Regarding claim 1, O’Donnell teaches:
A method comprising:
a scene of light volumes to generate a set of lights that contribute to shading operations of the tile.(O’Donnell at least in Sections 3.2 and 3.3, teaches a light tree allows to assign lights to tiles…. frustum culling of the light sources/volumes and the sorting by distance to the camera plane… assign the light sources to frustum-aligned grid cells.)
O’Donnel is silent to teach generating a ray representative of an area of a tile of a shade space texture; and casting the ray into a scene of light intersection.
On the other hand, Hunt teaches generating a ray representative of an area of a tile of a shade space texture; and casting the ray into a scene of light intersection. (Hunt at least in Abstract and Fig 3, teaches a method for determine visibility may perform intersection tests using block beams, tile beams, and rays. First, a computing system may project a block beam to test for intersection with a first bounding volume (BV) in a bounding volume hierarchy…)
However, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to implement ray tile casting for visibility testing in a scene in Hunt to traverse the light tree in O’Donnell’s Tiled Light Trees. The combination provides support for animation and physically-based shading and lighting to improve the realism of the rendered scenes (Hunt [0006].)
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Regarding claim 2, O’Donnell (Tiled Light Trees) in view of Hunt teaches:
The method of claim 1, further comprising generating a light list including the set of lights. (O’Donnell at least in 3.4 GPU traversal, teaches Our hybrid algorithm has to combine both tree-traversal and list iteration for optimal performance. As our tree traversal code already allows for a variable amount of light sources per leaf node… O’Donnell at least in Sections 4.2, teaches the tree traversal allows us to rapidly identify the light sources actually intersecting the pixel, while clustered shading has to traverse long lists for those cells.)
Regarding claim 4, O’Donnell (Tiled Light Trees) in view of Hunt teaches:
The method of claim 1, further comprising repeating the generating and casting for each visible tile of a shade space texture. (O’Donnell at least in Sections 3.2 and 3.3, teaches a light tree allows to assign lights to (visible) tiles for tiled shading space texture….)
Regarding claim 5, O’Donnell (Tiled Light Trees) in view of Hunt teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein casting the ray into the scene comprises identifying which light volumes in the scene are intersected by the ray. (O’Donnell at least in Sections 4.2, teaches the tree traversal allows us to rapidly identify the light sources/volumes actually intersecting the pixel, while clustered shading has to traverse long lists for those cells.)
Regarding claim 6, O’Donnell (Tiled Light Trees) in view of Hunt teaches:
The method of claim 5 wherein generating the set of lights comprises identifying lights associated with the light volumes in the scene that are intersected by the ray. (O’Donnell at least in Sections 4.2, teaches the tree traversal allows us to rapidly identify the light sources actually intersecting the pixel, while clustered shading has to traverse long lists for those cells.)
Regarding claim 7, O’Donnell (Tiled Light Trees) in view of Hunt teaches:
The method of claim 5, wherein identifying which light volumes in the scene are intersected by the ray includes executing an intersection shader upon determining that the ray intersects a bounding volume for a leaf node. (O’Donnell at least in Section 3.2 Tree construction, teaches storing a skip count with each node which allows us to traverse any binary tree laid out in depth-first order… We use one bit to indicate if a node is a leaf. The remaining 16 bits are used for the number of lights. This allows us to store up to 216 lights per tile. We target several lights per leaf node… O’Donnell at least in Section 3.4 GPU traversal, teaches Our hybrid algorithm has to combine both tree-traversal and list iteration for optimal performance. As our tree traversal code already allows for a variable amount of light sources per leaf node… O’Donnell at least in Sections 4.2, teaches the tree traversal allows us to rapidly identify the light sources actually intersecting the pixel, while clustered shading has to traverse long lists for those cells.)
Regarding claim 8, O’Donnell (Tiled Light Trees) in view of Hunt teaches:
The method of claim 1, further comprising shading the tile based on the set of lights. (O’Donnell at least in Abstract and Sections 3, teaches hybrid approach which combines the strengths of light trees with clustered shading… each tile has its own unique light tree including set of lights.).
Regarding claim 9, O’Donnell (Tiled Light Trees) in view of Hunt teaches:
The method of claim 1, further comprising building a bounding volume hierarchy corresponding to the scene of light volumes. (O’Donnell at least in Sections 3, teaches building a light tree of light sources/volumes)
Regarding claims 10-11, and 13-20, it recites similar limitations of claims 1-2, and 4-9 but in a method form. The rationale of claims 1-2, and 4-9 rejection is applied to reject claims 10-11, and 13-20.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Please see form PTO-892.
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/PHUC N DOAN/ Examiner, Art Unit 2618
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