A semi-Lagrangian contouring method for fluid simulation

In this sketch we present a semi-Lagrangian surface tracking method for use with fluid simulations. Our method main- tains an explicit polygonal mesh that defines the surface, and an octree data structure that provides both a spatial index for the mesh and an efficient means for evaluating the signed- distance function away from the surface. At each time step the surface is reconstructed from an implicit function defined by the composition of backward advection and the previous signed-distance function. One of the primary advantages of this formulation is that it enables tracking of surface charac- teristics, such as color or texture coordinates, at negligible additional cost. We include several examples demonstrating that the method can be used as part of a fluid simulation to effectively animate complex and interesting fluid behaviors.