Eric Mootz, creator of some great tools for Softimage shows of some new features of his emPolygonizer3 for Softimage where he explains level of detail and how to create meshes from point cloud data.
“emPolygonizer3 is a custom operator that allows you to create what is typically called “metaballs”. The underlying technique used by this plug-in is called “polygonizing a scalar field” or “marching cubes”.”
emPolygonizer3 3.01 Tutorial 01 – Level of Detail, Meshing a Point Cloud from Eric Mootz on Vimeo.
“The following things are demonstrated and/or explained in this tutorial: the “Level of Detail” & how to properly mesh a point cloud.”