An Efficient Surface Reconstruction Pipeline for Particle-Based Fluids

Abstract

In this paper we present an efficient surface reconstruction pipeline for particle-based fluids such as smoothed particle hydrodynamics. After the scalar field computation and the marching cubes based triangulation, we post process the surface mesh by applying surface decimation and subdivision algorithms. In comparison to existing approaches, the decimation step alleviates the particle alignment related bumpiness very efficiently and reduces the number of triangles in flat regions. Later, the subdivision step ensures that the non-smooth regions are smoothed in a performance friendly way which allows our approach to run significantly faster by using lower resolution marching cubes grids. The presented pipeline is applicable to particle position data sets in a frame by frame basis. Throughout the paper, we present both visual and performance comparisons with different parameter settings, and with a state-of-the-art surface reconstruction technique. Our results demonstrate that in comparison to other approaches with comparable surface quality, our pipeline runs 15 to 20 times faster with up to 80% less memory and secondary storage consumption.