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 § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Schmidt (US 20140253548 A1).
Regarding claim 1:
Schmidt teaches:
A computer-implemented method for mapping a texture on one or more points in a 3D scene, the one or more points in the 3D scene being obtained from a user-input with an input device, the method comprising:
determining, from the user-input (Schmidt: In practice, the stroke may be generated based on input received from the end-user [0029]) performed with the input device (Schmidt: computing device 100 [0025]), the one or more points in the 3D scene to be textured (Schmidt: collecting points associated with the 3D model that fall within the geodesic circle, Abstract);
computing a 3D support (Schmidt: stroke model [0048]) comprising the determined one or more points to be textured (Schmidt: The stroke model includes one or more copies of points within 3D model 110 that fall within stroke 502 [0048]);
computing a texture based on the determined one or more points (Schmidt: The stroke parameterization engine then projects the texture map onto the surface of the 3D model, Abstract; see Note 1A); and
rendering the computed texture on the computed 3D support (Schmidt: FIG. 2A is a conceptual diagram that illustrates texture map 112 projected onto a geodesic trace 204 on the surface of 3D model 110 [0030]; see Note 1B).
Note 1A: The projection of the texture in Schmidt is analogous to the computing of the texture in the instant application because in Fig. 2A and 2B of Schmidt, it is shown that a texture 112 is applied to the geodesic based on the points of the geodesic trace.
Note 1B: Previously, the 3D support was analogized to the “stroke model”. The stroke model is based on the geodesic trace: “As shown [in Fig. 5B], stroke model 520 includes stroke 522 and geodesic trace 524.” [0050]. Schmidt teaches in [0030] that the texture may be applied to the geodesic trace, which is then applied to the surface of the 3D model.
Regarding claim 2:
Schmidt teaches:
The computer-implemented method of claim 1 (as shown above), the method further comprising:
parametrizing the one or more points to be textured, wherein the computing the texture further comprises computing the texture based on the parametrized one or more points (Schmidt: The stroke parameterization engine then parameterizes points associated with the polyline and the geodesic trace using UV coordinates associated with a texture map, Abstract).
Regarding claim 3:
Schmidt teaches:
The computer-implemented method of claim 1 (as shown above), wherein the 3D scene includes a 3D modeled object, the computing of the 3D support further comprising:
placing each of the one or more points on the 3D modeled object (Schmidt: The points included within stroke 202 and geodesic trace 204 generally are associated with surface (XYZ) coordinates that define a 3D position on the surface of 3D model 110 [0034]); and
determining a part of the 3D modeled object (Schmidt: identifying portions of 3D model 110 [0031]) serving as the 3D support (Schmidt: The stroke model includes one or more copies of points within 3D model 110 that fall within stroke 502 or geodesic trace 504 [0048]).
Regarding claim 4:
Schmidt teaches:
The computer-implemented method of claim 3 (as shown above), wherein the placing of each of the one or more points on the 3D modeled object includes projecting each of the one or more points on a surface of the 3D modeled object (Schmidt: In doing so, stroke parameterization engine 114 is configured to project point 410 into the plane defined by axes 406 and 408 along path 412 to a position 41 [0038]; see Note 4A).
Note 4A: Schmidt teaches that: “R1 Axis 406 and R2 axis 408 define a plane that resides tangent to point 402 on the surface of 3D model 110.” [0037]. Therefore, one of ordinary skill in the art would understand Schmidt is projecting onto the surface of the 3D model.
Regarding claim 5:
Schmidt teaches:
The computer-implemented method of claim 3 (as shown above), wherein the determined part of the 3D modeled object is a single surface that includes each of the one or more points placed on the 3D modeled object (Schmidt: generating a polyline that includes a first plurality of points that resides along a stroke path defined across a surface region of the 3D model [0007]).
Regarding claim 10:
The computer-implemented method of claim 1, the method further comprising: displaying the rendered texture on the 3D support (Schmidt: FIG. 5B is a conceptual diagram that illustrates a stroke model 520 parameterized with UV coordinates, according to one embodiment of the invention. [0050]; see Note 10A).
Note 10A: Schmidt in Fig. 5B showcases that the stroke model is textured with the texture 112 (the texture originally shown in Figure 2A).
Regarding claim 13:
Claim 13 is substantially similar to Claim 1, and is therefore rejected for similar reasons. Claim 13 contains the following notable differences:
Claim 13 claims a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium as opposed to a method. Schmidt teaches such a medium: “The program(s) of the program product define functions of the embodiments (including the methods described herein) and can be contained on a variety of computer-readable storage media.” [0079].
Regarding claim 14:
Claim 14 is substantially similar to Claim 2, and is therefore rejected for similar reasons. Claim 14 contains the following notable differences:
Claim 14 claims a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium as opposed to a method. Claim 14 is based on claim 13. Above it was shown that Schmidt teaches a computer-readable storage medium.
Regarding claim 15:
Claim 15 is substantially similar to Claim 3, and is therefore rejected for similar reasons. Claim 15 contains the following notable differences:
Claim 15 claims a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium as opposed to a method. Claim 15 is based on claim 13. Above it was shown that Schmidt teaches a computer-readable storage medium.
Regarding claim 16:
Claim 16 is substantially similar to Claim 4, and is therefore rejected for similar reasons. Claim 16 contains the following notable differences:
Claim 16 claims a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium as opposed to a method. Claim 16 is based on claim 15 which is in turn based on claim 13. Above it was shown that Schmidt teaches a computer-readable storage medium.
Regarding claim 17:
Claim 17 is substantially similar to Claim 1, and is therefore rejected for similar reasons. Claim 17 contains the following notable differences:
Claim 17 claims a system as opposed to a method. Schmidt teaches a system: “One embodiment of the invention may be implemented as a program product for use with a computer system.” [0079].
Regarding claim 18:
Claim 18 is substantially similar to Claim 2, and is therefore rejected for similar reasons. Claim 18 contains the following notable differences:
Claim 18 claims a system as opposed to a method. Claim 18 is based on claim 17. Above it was shown that Schmidt teaches a computer-readable storage medium.
Regarding claim 19:
Claim 19 is substantially similar to Claim 3, and is therefore rejected for similar reasons. Claim 19 contains the following notable differences:
Claim 19 claims a system as opposed to a method. Claim 19 is based on claim 17. Above it was shown that Schmidt teaches a computer-readable storage medium.
Regarding claim 20:
Claim 20 is substantially similar to Claim 4, and is therefore rejected for similar reasons. Claim 20 contains the following notable differences:
Claim 20 claims a system as opposed to a method. Claim 20 is based on claim 19 which is in turn based on claim 17. Above it was shown that Schmidt teaches a computer-readable storage medium.
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.
Claims 6 and 7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C 103 as being unpatentable over Schmidt: (US 20140253548 A1) in view of Igarashi (NPL: Adaptive Unwrapping for Interactive Texture Painting; from Applicant’s IDS).
Regarding claim 6:
The computer-implemented method of claim 5 (as shown above), wherein the 3D modeled object is tessellated with polygons (Schmidt: The 3D model of the object […] may include a polygonal mesh [0004]), and wherein the determining of the part of the 3D modeled object serving as the 3D support further comprises:
computing a copy of the single surface, the copy of the single surface serving as the 3D support (Schmidt: The stroke model includes one or more copies of points within 3D model 110 [0048]).
Schmidt fails to explicitly teach:
identifying the polygons of the 3D modeled object that comprise the placed points;
aggregating the identified polygons thereby obtaining the single surface; and
Igarashi teaches:
identifying the polygons of the 3D modeled object that comprise the placed points (Igarashi: The system identifies the painted polygons each time the user paints strokes, and assigns new UV-coordinates and a new texture bitmap to them, Pg. 5, col. 1, par. 1);
aggregating the identified polygons thereby obtaining the single surface (Igarashi: Finally, the system updates the UV-coordinates of the painted polygons and associates them with the new texture (Figure 9d), Pg. 5, col. 2, par. 1; see Note 6A); and
Note 6A: Schmidt teaches that the 3D model may include a polygonal mesh. Igarashi teaches that “painted polygons” may be identified. In Figure 9 on Pg. 5 of Igarashi, it is shown in (d) that the polygons of painted surface are aggregated and organized to form a surface representing the painted portion.
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to combine the teachings of Schmidt with Igarashi. Identifying the polygons of the 3D modeled object that comprise the placed points; and aggregating the identified polygons thereby obtaining the single surface, as in Igarashi, would benefit the Schmidt teachings by enabling Schmidt to detect which polygons are to be painted onto.
Regarding claim 7:
Schmidt teaches:
The computer-implemented method of claim 5 (as shown above),
Schmidt fails to teach:
further comprising: computing a new tessellation of the single surface.
Igarashi teaches:
further comprising: computing a new tessellation of the single surface (Igarashi: Another important future direction is to re-mesh the underlying geometry as the user paints, Pg. 9, col. 1, par. 3; see Note 7A).
Note 7A: Igarashi teaches that the mesh may be “re-meshed” during painting. One of ordinary skill in the art would understand that re-meshing is analogous to computing a new tessellation, because both methods effectively recompute the geometry of the mesh.
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to combine the teachings of Schmidt with Igarashi. Computing a new tessellation of the single surface, as in Igarashi, would benefit the Schmidt teachings because “re-meshing could also make multiresolution painting work better in an extremely zoomed-in view.” (Igarashi, Pg. 9, col. 1, par. 3).
Claim 8 is rejected under 35 U.S.C 103 as being unpatentable over Schmidt: (US 20140253548 A1) in view of Igarashi (NPL: Adaptive Unwrapping for Interactive Texture Painting; from Applicant’s IDS) and Mirela (NPL: Remeshing).
Regarding claim 8:
Schmidt in view of Igarashi teaches:
The computer-implemented method of claim 7 (as shown above),
Schmidt in view of Igarashi fails to explicitly teach:
wherein the computing of the new tessellation further comprises computing the new tessellation of the single surface with a density of tessellation that is substantially the same as a density of tessellation of the 3D modeled object or a density of tessellation of the part of the 3D modeled object.
Mirela teaches:
wherein the computing of the new tessellation further comprises computing the new tessellation of the single surface with a density of tessellation that is substantially the same as a density of tessellation of the 3D modeled object or a density of tessellation of the part of the 3D modeled object (Mirela, Pg. 11; see Note 8A).
Note 8A: On slide 11, Mirela teaches a uniformly sampled remesh of a single surface model. The uniform remesh has substantially the same density as the input model. In the context of Mirela, one of ordinary skill in the art would understand Igarashi to teach a new tessellation that has a density substantially the same as the density of the 3D modeled object.
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to combine the teachings of Schmidt in view of Igarashi with Mirela. Computing the new tessellation of the single surface with a density of tessellation that is substantially the same as a density of tessellation of the 3D modeled object or a density of tessellation of the part of the 3D modeled object, as in Mirela, would benefit the Schmidt in view of Igarashi teachings by preserving the model resolution while improving the topology.
Claim 9, 11, and 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C 103 as being unpatentable over Schmidt: (US 20140253548 A1) in view of Rosales (NPL: SurfaceBrush: From Virtual Reality Drawings to Manifold Surfaces).
Regarding claim 9:
Schmidt teaches:
The computer-implemented method of claim 1 (as shown above),
Schmidt fails to explicitly teach:
wherein the one or more points are coplanar and the computing of the 3D support further comprises determining a rectangular surface including each of the one or more points, the determined rectangular surface consisting of two triangles.
Rosales teaches:
wherein the one or more points are coplanar (Rosales: These terms zero out when the edges are both parallel and coplanar and jointly reflect how far they are from satisfying these conditions, Pg. 8, Persistence score, see Note 9A), and
the computing of the 3D support further comprises determining a rectangular surface including each of the one or more points, the determined rectangular surface consisting of two triangles (Rosales: Given two consecutive match pairs pi,qj and pi+1,qj+1 (or similarly pi+1,qj−1) it triangulates the quad pi,pi+1,qi+1,qi, Pg. 9, Section 5.3: Mesh Strip Generation).
Note 9A: Rosales teaches: “At the core of our framework is the need to match sections, or edge sequences, along input strokes that bound surface strips on the artist-envisioned surface. When matching stroke sections, we seek matches that reflect four key properties: proximity, tangent similarity, persistence, and normal consistency”, (Pg. 5-6, Section 5: Inter-Stroke Surface Strips). As part of checking persistence, Rosales teaches: “Given a pair of consecutive vertices pi,pi+1 that match to a pair of vertices qi and qi+1, respectively, we measure persistence using a combination of three distances […] The second and third jointly promote co-planarity and parallelism between them. These terms zero out when the edges are both parallel and coplanar and jointly reflect how far they are from satisfying these conditions.” (emphasis added). Therefore, one of ordinary skill in the art would conclude that the points determined by Rosales are coplanar.
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to combine the teachings of Schmidt with Rosales. Determining a rectangular surface including each of the one or more points, the determined rectangular surface consisting of two triangles, as in Rosales, would benefit the Schmidt teachings by enabling the system to handle haphazardly drawn strokes from the user: “In particular, artist drawings (see e.g. Figure 2) have inconsistent stroke normal orientations and partially overlapping strokes; they frequently contain intersecting stroke groups and may exhibit isolated outlier strokes,” (Rosales: Pg. 2, Section 1: Introduction).
Regarding claim 11:
Schmidt teaches:
The computer-implemented method of claim 1 (as shown above), the method further comprising:
Schmidt alone fails to teach:
detecting that the user-input is extended
determining one or more new points from the extended user-input;
recomputing the 3D support so that the recomputed 3D support comprises the one or more new points;
recomputing the texture so that the recomputed texture comprises the textured one or more new points; and
updating the rendering of the recomputed texture on the recomputed 3D support.
Rosales teaches:
detecting that the user-input is extended (Rosales: We first apply our matching algorithm (Section 5.1) to sections of the input strokes that lie on the boundaries of the current partial meshes, Pg. 10, Section 5.5: Partial Mesh Extension);
Schmidt in view of Rosales teaches (see Note 11A):
determining one or more new points (Schmidt: collecting points associated with the 3D model that fall within the geodesic circle, Abstract) from the extended user-input (Schmidt: In practice, the stroke may be generated based on input received from the end-user [0029]);
recomputing the 3D support (Schmidt: stroke model [0048]) so that the recomputed 3D support comprises the one or more new points (Schmidt: The stroke model includes one or more copies of points within 3D model 110 that fall within stroke 502 [0048]);
recomputing the texture so that the recomputed texture comprises the textured one or more new points (Schmidt: The stroke parameterization engine then projects the texture map onto the surface of the 3D model, Abstract; see Note 1A); and
updating the rendering of the recomputed texture on the recomputed 3D support (Schmidt: FIG. 2A is a conceptual diagram that illustrates texture map 112 projected onto a geodesic trace 204 on the surface of 3D model 110 [0030]; see Note 1B).
Note 11A: Rosales teaches: “We connect such left-out stroke sections with mesh strips using a similar process to the one above.” (Pg. 10, Section 5.5: Partial Mesh Extension). One of ordinary skill in the art would understand that they should repeat the previous steps performed while taking the new stroke into account. In other words, the steps of the previously mapped claim 1 would be performed again on the extended input.
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to combine the teachings of Schmidt with Rosales. Detecting that the user-input is extended and recomputing the stroke model, as in Rosales, would benefit the Schmidt teachings by enabling the system to handle haphazardly drawn strokes from the user: “In particular, artist drawings (see e.g. Figure 2) have inconsistent stroke normal orientations and partially overlapping strokes; they frequently contain intersecting stroke groups and may exhibit isolated outlier strokes,” (Rosales: Pg. 2, Section 1: Introduction).
Regarding claim 12:
Schmidt in view of Rosales teaches:
The computer-implemented method of claim 11 (As shown above), the method further comprising: displaying the recomputed texture on the 3D support (Schmidt: FIG. 5B is a conceptual diagram that illustrates a stroke model 520 parameterized with UV coordinates, according to one embodiment of the invention. [0050]; see Note 10A and Note 11A).
Conclusion
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/VINCENT ALEXANDER PROVIDENCE/Examiner, Art Unit 2617 /KING Y POON/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2617