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 .
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.
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, 6-7, 10, 12-13, 18-19, 22 and 24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hemmer et al. (US Pat. Pub. No. 20200265611 “Hemmer”) in view of Hoppe (“Progressive Meshes”, Seminal Graphics Papers: Pushing the Boundaries, Volume 2 August 2023 Article No.: 13, Pages 111 – 120 https://doi.org/10.1145/3596711.3596725 Published: 02 August 2023 “Hoppe”).
Regarding claim 13, Hemmer teaches A system (Fig. 1) for compressing a mesh utilizing information obtained during decimation of the mesh (“[0035] The compression computer 120 is configured to compress data associated with a triangular mesh representing a three-dimensional object”), the system comprising:
one or more processors configured by computer readable instructions (“[0036] In some embodiments, one or more of the components of the compression computer 120 can be, or can include processors (e.g., processing units 124) configured to process instructions stored in the memory 126”) to:
obtain a decimated mesh and information obtained during decimation of the mesh, wherein decimation includes at least one of a removal of a face or an addition of a face (“[0046] In some implementations, there are one or more instances of the mesh decimation manager 142, each being configured to perform a different mesh decimation operation. In some implementations, the decimation operation may include one of a set of edge collapse operations, such as half-edge, mid-edge or a full edge operations. [0048] In some implementations, the edge collapse operations performed on the first LOD data 132 are configured to preserve a set of seam edges. In some implementations, the seam edges may be provided alongside with the first LOD” half edge collapse = 1 face removal, full edge collapse = 1 or 2 face removal based on boundary or inner edge);
encode the obtained mesh into a compressed stream (“[0178] At 1512, the single-rate encoding manager 1270 performs a single-rate encoding operation on each of the mesh LODs of the selected sequence of LODs to produce a sequence of single-rate encoded mesh LODs”);
Even though Hemmer teaches encode one or more incremental updates into the compressed stream; wherein applying the incremental updates to the decimated mesh enables the mesh to be reconstructed from the decimated mesh (“[0179] At 1514, the progressive encoding manager 1272 performs a progressive encoding of the texture image LODs to produce progressive-encoded texture image LODs. [0031] A technical advantage of the above-described technical solution is that a progressive mesh encoder resulting from such an optimization of the agony at each LOD reduction phase will improve the rate-distortion tradeoff and, ultimately, the user's experience in decoding and rendering the LODs representing three-dimensional objects in an application”) but is silent about incremental updates into the compressed stream using the information obtained during decimation of the mesh; wherein the one or more incremental updates include at least one of a reversal of a face removal or a reversal of a face addition,
Hoppe teaches, Hoppe teaches, encode one or more incremental updates into the compressed stream using the information obtained during decimation of the mesh, wherein the one or more incremental updates include at least one of a reversal of a face removal or a reversal of a face addition, wherein applying the incremental updates to the decimated mesh enables the mesh to be reconstructed from the decimated mesh. (
Section 3.1 shows sequential edge collapse to get the base mesh and recording of opposite operation of collapse/removal(vsplit operation) and section 3.2 encodes vspit information
3 PROGRESSIVEMESHREPRESENTATION 3.1 Overview Right Column “The vertex vt and the two adjacent faces {vs;vt;vl} and {vt;vs;vr} vanish in the process. A position vs is specified for the new unified vertex.
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Section 3.2 encodes vsplit which is the reversal of edge removal operation or face removal operation.
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Section 3.3 described transmission of incremented update for rebuilding or reconstructing the mesh.
)
Therefore it would have been obvious for an ordinary skilled person in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Hemmer to have included encode one or more incremental updates into the compressed stream using the information obtained during decimation of the mesh, the one or more incremental updates include at least one of a reversal of a face removal or a reversal of a face addition, wherein applying the incremental updates to the decimated mesh enables the mesh to be reconstructed from the decimated mesh as taught by Li.
The motivation to include the modification is to achieve efficient transmission, adaptive rendering, and storage optimization by focusing only on the changes between mesh states rather than re-encoding the entire geometry.
Claim 1 is directed to a method claim and its steps are similar in scope and functions performed by the elements of system claim 13 and therefore claim 1 is also rejected with the same rationale as specified in the rejection of claim 13.
Regarding claims 6 and 18 Hemmer modified by Hoppe teaches wherein decimation further includes at least one of an edge collapse or a half-edge collapse(Hemmer “[0046] In some implementations, there are one or more instances of the mesh decimation manager 142, each being configured to perform a different mesh decimation operation. In some implementations, the decimation operation may include one of a set of edge collapse operations, such as half-edge, mid-edge or a full edge operations”).
Regarding claims 7 and 19 Hemmer modified by Hoppe teaches wherein the one or more incremental updates further include at least one of a reversal of an edge collapse or half-edge collapse (Section 3.1 shows sequential edge collapse to get the base mesh and recording of opposite operation of collapse/removal(vsplit operation) and section 3.2 encodes vspit information
3 PROGRESSIVEMESHREPRESENTATION 3.1 Overview Right Column “The vertex vt and the two adjacent faces {vs;vt;vl} and {vt;vs;vr} vanish in the process. A position vs is specified for the new unified vertex.
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Section 3.2 encodes vsplit which is the reversal of edge removal operation.)
Regarding claims 10 and 22, Hemmer modified by Hoppe teaches, encode the reversal of a face removal, the one or more processors are configured to encode at least a first edge, a second edge, two vertices from the first edge, and one vertex from the second edge. (Hoppe. 3 PROGRESSIVEMESHREPRESENTATION 3.1 Overview Right Column “The vertex vt and the two adjacent faces {vs;vt;vl} and {vt;vs;vr} vanish in the process. A position vs is specified for the new unified vertex.
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Regarding claims 12 and 24 Hemmer modified by Hoppe is silent about reorder the one or more incremental updates based on edges in the decimated mesh to which the incremental updates relate. (5 RESULTS Left Column “Construction of the PM representation proceeds in three steps. First, as the simplification algorithm applies a sequence ecoln 1 :::ecol0 of transformations to the original mesh, it writes to a file the sequence vsplitn 1 :::vsplit0 of corresponding in verse transformations. When finished, the algorithm also writes the resulting base mesh M0. Next, we reverse the order of the vsplit records. Finally, we renumber the vertices and faces of (M0;vsplit0 :::vsplitn 1) to match the indexing scheme of Section 3.1 in order to obtain a concise format”);
Therefore it would have been obvious for an ordinary skilled person in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Hemmer modified by Hoppe by reordering the one or more incremental updates based on edges in the decimated mesh to which the incremental updates relate as further taught by Hoppe.
The motivation for the above for proper encoding of object based on decimation.
Claim(s) 2 and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hemmer modified by Hoppe as applied to claims 1 and 13 above, and further in view of GAO et al. (US Pat. Pub. No. 20230360328 “Gao”).
Regarding claims 2 and 14 Hemmer modified by Hoppe teaches, decimate the mesh as shown above but is silent about, wherein decimating the mesh includes comparing the mesh and at least one candidate decimation based on one or more metrics, wherein at least one of the one or more metrics is based on a silhouette projection for a plane.
Gao teaches decimating mesh includes comparing the mesh and at least one candidate decimation based on one or more metrics, wherein at least one of the one or more metrics is based on a silhouette projection for a plane (“[0046] The effectiveness and performance of related methods and the low-poly mesh generation disclosed herein were empirically compared based on a dataset containing one hundred building models with varying styles that are manually crafted by artists and used by real-world games. The low-poly mesh generation disclosed herein can exhibit a significant improvement, such as in achieving a low element count and/or high visual appearance preservation of the results. [0061]……To compute a silhouette from a view direction d, all faces of M.sub.i can be projected onto a plane perpendicular to the view direction d. A 2D Boolean union can then be used to obtain the corresponding silhouette shape, where the vertex coordinates can be represented by integers for fast and robust computation. The generated silhouette shape can be guaranteed to have no self-intersections”);
Gao and Hemmer modified by Hoppe are analogous as they are from the field of mesh processing.
Therefore it would have been obvious for an ordinary skilled person in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Hemmer modified by Hoppe by decimating mesh includes comparing the mesh and at least one candidate decimation based on one or more metrics, wherein at least one of the one or more metrics is based on a silhouette projection for a plane as taught by Gao.
The motivation for the above is to have a improved mesh simplification (Gao {[0046]…The low-poly mesh generation disclosed herein can exhibit a significant improvement, such as in achieving a low element count and/or high visual appearance preservation of the results.”)
Claim(s) 3 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hemmer modified by Hoppe as applied to claims 1 and 13 above, and further in view of LIU et al. (US Pat. Pub. No. 20180330480 “Liu”).
Regarding claims 3 and 15 Hemmer modified by Hoppe is silent about wherein decimating the mesh includes generating a bump map utilizing UV mapping, the bump map including indications of portions of a geometry of the mesh cut off during decimation.
Liu teaches decimating the mesh includes generating a bump map utilizing UV mapping, the bump map including indications of portions of a geometry of the mesh cut off during decimation (“[0147]….. Retopology uses mesh reduction techniques, such as mesh decimation, to reduce the polygon count of the high-poly model. After mesh reduction, texture mapping may be employed to add details from the high-poly model back into the low-poly model without a significant increase to the polygon count. [0167] At 2020, the reduced 3D model is UV mapped to bring back the texture of the asset. “Baking” is a term often used in 3D modelling to describe a process of bringing in or applying texture to a surface. UV mapping is a process of projecting a 2D image to a 3D model's surface for the purposes of texture mapping. For example, a suitable UV editing application performs the UV mapping by generating the appropriate UV maps (e.g. normal maps, height maps, bump maps, etc.) to bake in the texture of the asset back into to the reduced 3D model”);
Liu and Hemmer modified by Hoppe are analogous as they are from the field of mesh processing.
Therefore it would have been obvious for an ordinary skilled person in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Hemmer modified by Hoppe by decimating the mesh includes generating a bump map utilizing UV mapping, the bump map including indications of portions of a geometry of the mesh cut off during decimation as taught by Liu.
The motivation for the above is to make decimation of mesh in an efficient way.
Claim(s) 4 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hemmer modified by Hoppe as applied to claims 1 and 13 above, and further in view McDaniel (US Pat. Pub. No. 20090079734 “McDaniel”).
Regarding claims 4 and 16 Hemmer modified by Hoppe is silent about generating a convex mesh. wherein the mesh comprises a convex mesh, wherein the one or more processors are further configured to: generate a convex mesh; and decimate the convex mesh, wherein the decimated mesh comprises the decimated convex mesh.
McDaniel teaches, generating a convex mesh, the mesh comprises a convex mesh, wherein the one or more processors are further configured to: generate a convex mesh; and decimate the convex mesh, wherein the decimated mesh comprises the decimated convex mesh (“[0051]….. Our system can perform collision detection using the meshes directly or it can simplify the shapes into more computationally simpler objects. For example, the number of triangles in the mesh can be reduced using mesh decimation. If the mesh happens to be convex”);
McDaniel and Hemmer modified by Hoppe are analogous as they are from the field of mesh processing.
Therefore it would have been obvious for an ordinary skilled person in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Hemmer modified by Hoppe by having mesh that comprises a convex mesh, wherein the one or more processors are further configured to: generate a convex mesh; and decimate the convex mesh, wherein the decimated mesh comprises the decimated convex mesh as taught by McDaniel.
The motivation for the above is to have no inward-bending, dent or hole in the nesh decimation process.
Claim(s) 5 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hemmer modified by Hoppe and McDaniel as applied to claims 4 and 16 above, and further in view of Mason (US Pat. Pub. No. 20190295297 “Mason”).
Regarding claims 5 and 17 Hemmer modified by Hoppe and McDaniel is silent about identify at least one non-convex vertex within the mesh; remove any faces adjacent to the identified non-convex vertex; identify at least one contour of a hole resulting from the removal of a face adjacent to the identified non-convex vertex; and fill the contour with faces.
Mason teaches identify at least one non-convex vertex within the mesh; remove any faces adjacent to the identified non-convex vertex (“[0093]…..In the process of in-game destruction, faces of operand meshes may be clipped by the faces of other meshes, resulting in complex concave faces with multiple holes, and therefore arbitrary number of boundaries. The fragments of the original mesh are often generated offline and loaded to the game during run time, although the meshes may alternatively be triangulated during run time. These faces are decomposed into convex faces for a number of reasons. [0136]….. Otherwise, if vertex 802 is concave (diagram d), them edge 802, 805 is assigned the direction of preceding base edge 801, 802. The effect is to orient edge 802, 805 such that it faces “toward” vertex 803, ready to form a later triangle with it”);
identify at least one contour of a hole resulting from the removal of a face adjacent to the identified non-convex vertex; and fill the contour with faces (“[0093]…..In the process of in-game destruction, faces of operand meshes may be clipped by the faces of other meshes, resulting in complex concave faces with multiple holes, and therefore arbitrary number of boundaries. The fragments of the original mesh are often generated offline and loaded to the game during run time, although the meshes may alternatively be triangulated during run time. These faces are decomposed into convex faces for a number of reasons. [0192] In addition to concavities in the outer boundary, complex polygons may also have hole boundaries. Hole boundaries are read as concavity polygons, as they do not form part of the convex hull of the polygon. The winding order of the hole boundaries is reversed compared to outer boundaries, as the hole boundaries represent holes and so have negative area”);
Mason and Hemmer modified by Hoppe and McDaniel are analogous as they are from the field of mesh processing.
Therefore it would have been obvious for an ordinary skilled person in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Hemmer modified by Hoppe and McDaniel by having identifying at least one non-convex vertex within the mesh; removing any faces adjacent to the identified non-convex vertex; identify at least one contour of a hole resulting from the removal of a face adjacent to the identified non-convex vertex; and fill the contour with faces as taught by Mason.
The motivation for the above is to have no inward-bending, dent or hole in the nesh decimation process.
Claim(s) 8-9 and 20-21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hemmer modified by Hoppe as applied to 19 above, and further in view of Zhou et al. (WO2023231872, “Zhou”).
Regarding claims 8 and 20, Hemmer modified by Hoppe teaches, encode a reversal of an edge collapse or half-edge collapse,( as shown in claim 7) but doesn’t expressly teach, the one or more processors are configured to encode an edge and a difference between a predicted coordinate along the edge and a coordinate along the edge of an inserted vertex.
However, Zhou teaches, one or more processors are configured to encode an edge and a difference between a predicted coordinate along the edge and a coordinate along the edge of an inserted vertex. ((“Please refer to Figure 8. Triangle S1 is a triangle that has currently encoded UV coordinates. The traversal method of the vertices to be encoded is the same as the order of the vertices of the encoded connection relationship when encoding the connection relationship. When no connection relationships are encoded, the vertex traversal order is the same as the vertex order in the base mesh. When performing encoding traversal, select one side as the edge τ1 currently being traversed, and use the triangle formed by connecting another encoded vertex as a half parallelogram to predict the UV coordinates of the vertex to be encoded opposite to the current edge, that is, in the figure The A2 point is used as the predicted vertex. At this time, the coordinate difference between the predicted vertex and the real vertex is calculated and encoded using entropy coding to form a UV coordinate sub-stream.”)
Zhou and Hemmer modified by Hoppe are analogous as they are from the field of mesh processing.
Therefore it would have been obvious for an ordinary skilled person in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Hemmer modified by Hoppe to have the one or more processors are configured to encode an edge and a difference between a predicted coordinate along the edge and a coordinate along the edge of an inserted vertex as taught by Zhou .
The motivation for the above is to provide sufficient information in the encoding process to make the reconstruction efficient.
Regarding claims 9 and 21, Hemmer modified by Hoppe and Zhou teaches, wherein the edge is encoded as a number in a current list of edges created by enumeration in the decimated mesh. ( Zhou, “Please refer to Figure 8. Triangle S1 is a triangle that has currently encoded UV coordinates. The traversal method of the vertices to be encoded is the same as the order of the vertices of the encoded connection relationship when encoding the connection relationship. When no connection relationships are encoded, the vertex traversal order is the same as the vertex order in the base mesh. When performing encoding traversal, select one side as the edge τ1 currently being traversed, and use the triangle formed by connecting another encoded vertex as a half parallelogram to predict the UV coordinates of the vertex to be encoded opposite to the current edge, that is, in the figure The A2 point is used as the predicted vertex. At this time, the coordinate difference between the predicted vertex and the real vertex is calculated and encoded using entropy coding to form a UV coordinate sub-stream.” Encoding is done in terms of bits, so each edge is encoded with a number.
The motivation of the above is same as the motivation of claim 20.)
Claim(s) 11 and 23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hemmer modified by Hoppe as applied to claims 1 and 13 above, and further in view of Gorman (US Patent No. 6396490 “Gorman”).
Regarding claims 11 and 23 Hemmer modified by Hoppe is silent about wherein to encode the reversal of a face addition, the one or more processors further configured to encode an edge followed by a flag indicating a face needing to be removed, wherein the flag indicates the face by identifying a position of the face relative to the edge.
Gorman teaches encode a reversal of a face addition, the one or more processors further configured to encode an edge followed by a flag indicating a face needing to be removed, wherein the flag indicates the face by identifying a position of the face relative to the edge (Fig. 5A and Fig. 5B
Col 12 lines 56-62 “The face order of a new face is predicted based on the face order of any adjacent faces. For example, if a new face is added that is adjacent to a modified face (already in the mesh), then the face order of the adjacent face is determined, reversed, and used as a predictor of the face order of the new face. This prediction is generated by a state machine. A symbol is encoded in the newFacesOrder channel (either PREDICT_GOOD or PREDICT_FAIL) to indicate if the prediction is correct”);
Gorman and Hemmer modified by Hoppe are analogous as they are from the field of mesh processing.
Therefore it would have been obvious for an ordinary skilled person in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Hemmer modified by Hoppe by encoding a reversal of a face addition, the one or more processors further configured to encode an edge followed by a flag indicating a face needing to be removed, wherein the flag indicates the face by identifying a position of the face relative to the edge as taught by Gorman.
The motivation for the above is to help decoding efficiently during reconstruction.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see remarks, Page 7 filed 08/18/2026, with respect to rejection of claims under 35 USC 112(b) have been fully considered and are persuasive. The rejection has been withdrawn.
Applicant’s arguments, see remarks Page 8-9, filed 08/18/2026, with respect to the rejection(s) of claim(s) 1 under 35 USC 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 under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hemmer et al. (US Pat. Pub. No. 20200265611 “Hemmer”) in view of Hoppe (“Progressive Meshes”, Seminal Graphics Papers: Pushing the Boundaries, Volume 2 August 2023 Article No.: 13, Pages 111 – 120 https://doi.org/10.1145/3596711.3596725 Published: 02 August 2023 “Hoppe”).
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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/TAPAS MAZUMDER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2615
