Fast grid-free surface tracking

We present a novel explicit surface tracking method. Its main advantage over existing approaches is the fact that it is both completely grid-free and fast which makes it ideal for the use in large unbounded domains. A further advantage is that its running time is less sensitive to temporal variations of the input mesh than existing approaches. In terms of performance, the method provides a good trade-off point between speed and quality. The main idea behind our approach to handle topological changes is to delete all overlapping triangles and to fill or join the resulting holes in a robust and efficient way while guaranteeing that the output mesh is both manifold and without boundary. We demonstrate the flexibility, speed and quality of our method in various applications such as Eulerian and Lagrangian liquid simulations and the simulation of solids under large plastic deformations.