Fluid Surface Reconstruction from Particles

Outlined is a new approach to the problem of surfacing particle-based fluid simulations. The key idea is to construct a surface that is as smooth as possible while remaining faithful to the particle locations. We describe a mesh-based algorithm that expresses the surface in terms of a constrained optimization problem. Our algorithm incorporates a secondary contribution in Marching Tiles, a generalization of the Marching Cubes isosurfacing algorithm. Marching Tiles provides guarantees on the minimum vertex valence, making the surface mesh more amenable to numerical operators such as the Bilaplacian.