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 § 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.
Claims 1, 7, 9, 10, 16, 18, and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gold et al. (US 11983834 B1), hereinafter as Gold, in view of Shamaei et al. (WO 2024226989 A2), hereinafter as Shamaei.
Regarding claim 1, Gold teaches a method for applying decal information to a three dimensional ("3D") comprising: accessing 3D model source material data, the 3D model source material data including data that describes one or more surface appearance values associated with a 3D model (“generating the 3D characters, one or more 3D source models may be standardized, applied to a base mesh with material ID assignments” Gold Abstract; “the base mesh may comprise a plurality of material IDs” Gold paragraph 7; “Base mesh 800, as shown in FIG. 8, may include one or more material IDs (e.g., material IDs 802, 804A, 804B, 806A, 806B, 808, and 810). Each of material IDs 802, 804A, 804B, 806A, 806B, 808, and 810 may denote a particular feature on base mesh 800” Gold paragraph 61) (A base mesh may be shrink-wrapped onto each of a plurality of standardized 3D models, wherein the base mesh may comprise a plurality of material IDs, each corresponding to one or more features. The computing device may then associate one or more of the plurality shrink-wrapped 3D models with each of the plurality of material IDs of the base mesh” Gold paragraph 7; “base mesh may be shrink-wrapped onto each of a plurality of standardized 3D models, wherein the base mesh may comprise a plurality of material IDs, each corresponding to one or more features” Gold paragraph [0007]) The base mesh and shrink-wrap both represent the 3D model.; accessing decal source material data, the decal source material data including data that describes one or more surface appearance values associated with a decal object (“the computing device may generate a composite texture map by assembling the extracted texture map feature selections from the one or more shrink-wrapped 3D models corresponding to each material ID of the base mesh” Gold paragraph 8; Fig. 12, element 1120); generating a proxy mesh for a portion of a surface of the 3D model source material data with proxy mesh geometric data representing the portion of the surface of the 3D model (“Extract polygonal mesh from shrimp-wrapped 3D models” Fig. 4, element 410; “method for generating composite meshes from shrink-wrapped 3D models” Gold paragraph 74; “ The extracted polygonal mesh may be a subset of the total mesh of the shrink-wrapped 3D model and may correspond to the polygons identified by the material ID” Gold paragraph (76)); applying a decal source material data onto the proxy mesh (“the computing device may generate a 3D character by combining the composite mesh and the composite texture map” Gold paragraph 9; “each composite mesh may be combined with each composite texture map to create a plurality of 3D characters” Gold paragraph 114, Fig, 3; “joining of composite meshes and composite texture maps into 3D characters, reference is made to FIG. 12, which depicts a 3D character as formed from a composite mesh and a composite texture map” Gold paragraph 115, Fig. 12).
While Gold fails to teach the concept of minimizing the distance values of the proxy mesh and the 3D model, Shamaei discloses deforming the proxy mesh to minimize one or more distance values between the proxy mesh geometric data and a portion of the 3D model source material data that represents the portion of the surface of the 3D model (“the deforming is performed with a goal to deform the mesh model through an optimization loop to minimize a selected distance between the mesh model and the segmented object model” Shamaei paragraph [00136]; claims 22, 53, 84).
Gold and Shamaei are both considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are both in the same field of generating a proxy mesh and applying it onto a 3D object. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Gold to incorporate the teachings of Shamaei to deform a proxy mesh and minimize the distance between the newly deformed proxy mesh and the 3D object. Doing so would allow the modification of a proxy mesh to correlate to the 3D model so the decal image can overlay onto the 3D model, then overlay the decal source material to the newly deformed proxy mesh (Gold Fig. 5; Shamaei Abstract).
Regarding claim 7, where Gold fails to teach the usage of point cloud, Shamaei further teaches the method of claim 1 wherein the 3D model comprises a point cloud or an implicit surface “an example camera used is a camera that includes laser-based ranging technology, for instance LIDAR (“light detection and ranging”; also referred to as “laser imaging, detection, and ranging”) technology that uses pulsed lasers for ranging. Such LIDAR-based camera technology can be leveraged to generate the point cloud of patient anatomy, including bone surface and soft tissue, as examples” Shamaei paragraph [0092]; “ generating the point cloud as a three-dimensional (3D) representation of the at least one object based on the image streams, segmenting the generated point cloud into a segmented object model for the at least one object” Shamaei abstract).
Since Gold and Shamaei are both from the same field of endeavor, it would have been obvious to an artisan before the effective filing date of this application to incorporate the known techniques of Gold in order to use a point cloud model to generate a 3D model. Specifically, point cloud and proxy meshes are widely used together in 3D modeling. Point clouds are often converted into mesh models to create more useable, continuous surfaces. Additionally, a proxy mesh can be displayed as a “point cloud in the viewport to maintain fast, real-time navigation of massive scenes. A proxy mesh can also be generated from a point cloud, acting as a simplified geometric representation to represent a 3D scan, allowing designers to work with large, detailed data, without overloading the system resources. Furthermore, applying a known technique to a known device, method, or product ready for improvement to yield predictable results would have obvious within a person of ordinary skill in the art.
Regarding claim 9, Gold further teaches the method of claim 1 wherein the 3D model source material data and the decal source material data includes information related to surface depth, surface normal, or surface color (“the processes described in step 320B of FIG. 3, and steps 505-520 of FIG. 5 in regard to texture maps may be performed for one or more other maps including, but not limited to, displacement, color, specular, roughness, normal, thickness, and occlusion maps” Gold paragraph 113)
Regarding claim 10, claim 10 is a system claim corresponding to the method claim 1, thus rejected for the same rationale as set forth above. The combination of Gold and Shamaei further discloses a memory component; a processing device coupled to medium storing executable instructions which when executed by a processing device, cause the processing device to perform operations (“Computing device 100 may include memory 110, which may store operating system 112, application software 114, and/or other applications 116. In some instances, additional data and/or programs may be stored in memory 110. Operating system 112 of memory 110 may be a standard computer operating system commonly found on the market, or may be an application-specific operating system designed for computing device 100 in performing the one or more methods” Gold paragraph 39; “In some instances, RAM 130 may be accessed and used by graphical processing unit (GPU) array 150 and/or the GPUs 152A, 152B, and 152n included therein” Gold paragraph 40; Fig. 1).
Regarding claim 16, claim 16 is a system claim corresponding to the method claim 7, thus rejected for the same rationale as set forth above.
Regarding claim 18, claim 18 is a system claim corresponding to the method claim 9, thus rejected for the same rationale as set forth above.
Regarding claim 19, it recites similar limitations of claim 10 but in a non-transitory computer readable medium form. The rationale of claim 10 rejections is applied to reject claim 19. In addition, Gold teaches a non-transitory computer readable medium (“Computing device 100 may include memory 110 Gold paragraph 39).
Claims 2, 11, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over the combination of Gold and Shamaei, as applied to claims 1, 10, 19 above, and further in view of Lim et al. (US 20150310604 A1), hereinafter as Lim.
Regarding claim 2, where Gold and Shamaei fail to teach the method of projecting a mesh to a 3d model, Lim discloses the method of claim 1 further comprising projecting the deformed proxy mesh with the applied decal source material data onto the 3D model (“the back-projection module may project the triangular mesh 430 from the image 310 onto the 3D model 370” Lim paragraph 0055, Fig. 4.).
Gold, Shamaei, and Lim are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are all in the same field of generating a proxy mesh and applying it onto a 3D object. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Gold and Shamaei to incorporate the teachings of Lim to project a mesh onto a 3D model. Doing so, would allow a smooth application of a decal onto a 3d model (“the intersections of the extracted texture map feature selections forming the composite texture map may be blended to create a more cohesive texture. In some instances, the blending may be performed relative to predefined numerical adjustments on an intersection-by-intersection basis” Gold paragraph (109), Fig. 5 element 502; “deforming a predefined mesh model, representative of at least a portion of the at least one object, to correlate to the segmented object model, the deforming providing a position of the at least one object in the environment” Shamaei abstract; “the back-projection module may project the triangular mesh 430 from the image 310 onto the 3D model 370” Lim paragraph 0055, Fig. 4).
Regarding claim 11, claim 11 is a system claim corresponding to the method claim 2, thus rejected for the same rationale as set forth above.
Regarding claim 20, it recites similar limitations of claim 11 but in a non-transitory computer readable medium form. The rationale of claim 11 rejections is applied to reject claim 20. In addition, Gold teaches a non-transitory computer readable medium (“Computing device 100 may include memory 110 Gold paragraph 39).
Claims 3 and 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over the combination of Gold and Shamaei, as applied to claims 1 and 10 above, and further in view of Garland et al. ("Surface Simplification Using Quadric Error Metrics", Michael Garland and Paul Seagrave Heckbert, 1997), hereinafter as Garland
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Regarding claim 3, where Gold and Shamaei fail to teach the method of deforming a proxy mesh using quadric error functions, Garland teaches the method of claim 1 wherein the proxy mesh geometric data includes vertex data and a subset of the one or more distance values includes vertex distance values, wherein deforming the proxy mesh geometric data includes deforming the vertex data by applying quadric error functional minimization to minimize the vertex distance values between the deformed proxy mesh vertex data and the portion of the 3D model source material data (“The error metric given in (2) can be rewritten as a quadratic form:
This fundamental error quadric Kp can be used to find the squared distance of any point in space to the plane p. We can sum these fundamental quadrics together and represent an entire set of planes by a single matrix Q.” Garland section 5 Deriving Error Quadrics;
”We have chosen a metric which measures the average squared distance between the approximation and the original model.” Garland section 6.1 Evaluating Approximations;
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“Our algorithm uses iterative pair contractions to simplify models and quadric error metrics to track the approximate error of the model as it is being simplified.” Garland section 9 Conclusion).
Gold, Shamaei and Garland are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are all in the same field of incorporating a mesh to form a 3D model. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Gold and Shamaei to incorporate the teachings of Garland to provide a method of minimizing the distance between the proxy mesh and the 3d model (Garland section 6.1 Evaluating Approximations). Doing so, would allow the smooth application of a decal onto a 3d model (“the intersections of the extracted texture map feature selections forming the composite texture map may be blended to create a more cohesive texture. In some instances, the blending may be performed relative to predefined numerical adjustments on an intersection-by-intersection basis” Gold paragraph (109), Fig. 5 element 502; “deforming a predefined mesh model, representative of at least a portion of the at least one object, to correlate to the segmented object model, the deforming providing a position of the at least one object in the environment” Shamaei abstract; “Our algorithm has the ability to join unconnected sections of models while still maintaining fairly high quality results.” Garland paragraph 9 Conclusion).
Regarding claim 12, claim 12 is a system claim corresponding to the method claim 3, thus rejected for the same rationale as set forth above.
Claims 6 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over the combination of Gold and Shamaei, as applied to claims 1 and 10 above, and further in view of Acharya et al. (US 20210287418 A1), hereinafter as Acharya.
Regarding claim 6, where Gold and Shamaei fail to teach the usage of Gbuffer, Acharya discloses the method of claim 1 wherein the 3D model source material data includes a surface normal map accessed from a Gbuffer (“ Positions, normals, and materials for each surface are rendered into a geometry buffer (G-buffer. In a subsequent render pass, a pixel shader computes the direct and indirect lighting at each pixel using the information of the texture buffers in screen space)” Acharya paragraph [0009]).
Gold, Shamaei, and Acharya are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are all in the same field of processing 3D graphics, specifically by subdividing images. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Gold and Shamaei to incorporate the teachings of Acharya to provide a method of using GBuffer for generating a 3D model. G-buffer is a known technique that is crucial in 3D rendering used to store geometric and material data in 2D textures. Furthermore, applying a known technique to a known device, method, or product ready for improvement to yield predictable results would have been obvious within a person of ordinary skill in the art to allow the smooth application of a decal onto a 3d model.
Regarding claim 15, claim 15 is a system claim corresponding to the method claim 6, thus rejected for the same rationale as set forth above.
Claims 8 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over the combination of Gold and Shamaei, as applied to claims 1 and 10 above, and further in view of Cowburn et al. (US 20200312008 A1), hereinafter as Cowburn.
Regarding claim 8, where Gold and Shamaei fail to explicitly teach the usage of UV parameterization, Cowburn discloses the method of claim 1 wherein the proxy mesh has a UV parameterization and the 3D model lacks a UV parameterization (“a UV map that includes a set of UV coordinates can be generated based on the positions of the vertices of the mesh. The UV map therefore comprises a projection of a 2D image upon a surface of the 3D model.” Cowburn paragraph [0003]).
Gold, Shamaei, and Cowburn are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are all in the same field of texture mapping 3D models. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Gold and Shamaei to incorporate the teachings of Cowburn to provide a method of using creating a UV map of a proxy mesh while the 3D model lacks a UV map. Doing so allows a smooth application of the proxy mesh onto the 3D model (“the intersections of the extracted texture map feature selections forming the composite texture map may be blended to create a more cohesive texture. In some instances, the blending may be performed relative to predefined numerical adjustments on an intersection-by-intersection basis” Gold paragraph (109), Fig. 5 element 502; “deforming a predefined mesh model, representative of at least a portion of the at least one object, to correlate to the segmented object model, the deforming providing a position of the at least one object in the environment” Shamaei abstract; “The UV map therefore comprises a projection of a 2D image upon a surface of the 3D model” Cowburn paragraph [0003]).
Regarding claim 17, claim 17 is a system claim corresponding to the method claim 8, thus rejected for the same rationale as set forth above.
Claims 4, 5, 13, and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over the combination of Gold, Shamaei, and Garland as applied to claims 3 and 12 above, and further in view of Nandakumar (US 11915349 B1), hereinafter as Nandakumar.
Regarding claim 4, claim 4 corresponds to the method claim 3, thus rejected for the same rationale as above. Where Gold, Shamaei, and Garland fail to teach the use of Bezier curve, Nandakumar discloses the method of using Bezier curves to define smooth curves in a 2D or 3D environment (“Rasterization may involve anti-aliasing that smooths the appearance of shape edges, e.g., selecting pixel values around edges to reduce abrupt changes or jagged appearances. Existing anti-aliasing techniques may fail to provide adequate results with respect to curves. Curves may be rasterized by interpreting the vertices of a primitive (e.g., a triangle) as the control points of a Bezier curve and selecting pixel values accordingly, e.g., using a signed distance value test” Nandakumar background]).
Gold, Shamaei, Garland, and Nandakumar are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are all in the same field of rendering 2d and 3d models. Garland teaches in claim 3 the method of deforming the vertex distance value between the deformed proxy mesh vertex data and the portion of the 3D model source material data. Incorporating the teachings of Nandakumar to this known method. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Gold, Shamaei, and Garland to incorporate the teachings of Nandakumar to provide a method of using Bezier curve to conduct the distance test between the merging of 2D or 3D object (a mesh in this case) and a 3d model. The Bezier curve distance values replace the distance value between the deformed proxy mesh Bezier curve data and the portion of the 3D model source material data. Furthermore, applying a known technique to a known device, method, or product ready for improvement to yield predictable results would have been obvious within a person of ordinary skill in the art to allow the smooth application of a decal onto a 3d model.
Regarding claim 5, Nandakumar further discloses the method of claim 4 wherein a region of the proxy mesh is recursively subdivided to generate additional vertex data and Bezier curve data while a Bezier curve distance value of one of the Bezier curves within the region exceeds a curvature threshold value (“vertices are used to represent control points that specify the geometry of a curve. For example, a Bezier curve may have a geometry defined by interpreting control points using de Casteljau's Algorithm”. Nandakumar paragraph 3).
Since Gold, Shamaei, Garland, and Nandakumar are all from the same field of endeavor, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to continue to divide the triangles until the vertices do not exceed the threshold value. Specifically, Casteljau’s algorithm is widely known to be a recursive method used to evaluate a Bezier curve at a specific parameter by repeatedly performing linear interpolation between control points. By continuing to split the curves, it reduces the distance between two objects. Furthermore, applying a known technique to a known device, method, or product ready for improvement to yield predictable results would have obvious within a person of ordinary skill in the art.
Regarding claim 13, claim 13 is a system claim corresponding to the method claim 4, thus rejected for the same rationale as set forth above.
Regarding claim 14, claim 14 is a system claim corresponding to the method claim 5, thus rejected for the same rationale as set forth above.
Conclusion
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SARAH Y. LEE
Patent Examiner
Art Unit 2619
/SARAH YEO LEE/Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2619
/JASON CHAN/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2619