Taylor Tomlinson

In regards to your changing typology, I'd also consider freezing the model on frame one with a Time Shift node, making your adjustments to the model in that state, then using a point deform to animate your adjusted model. If you watch John Lynch's Vellum masterclass, He goes over the Positional Based Dynamics logic that vellum uses, on a typical simulation, you have a starting position and a predicted position, and vellum just checks the space between the two to determine if a collision happens or not. The VDB stuff in Jeff Lait's is specifically in regards to points being brute forced into other colliders, and so the points can find their way back out of the collider geometry once that no longer happening. If you can keep to surface colliders and just address your topology issues, you'll come out with a much faster sim. I know I'm late to the party, but I figure I'd add my two cents in case other people come across this thread in the future.