What is currently the industry standard, leading software to work with point clouds, and to convert them to the highest quality possible meshes, to use with Blender?
For industrial plant modeling I use RealityCapture to convert large datasets to a textured mesh, with the added benefit of enriching the scans with data from photogrammetry. Note that RealityCapture can only handle data from static scanners. On the other hand it can handle crazy amounts of data, as in billions of triangles and simplifying it to a workable amount keeps detail nicely intact. I’m also fond of the licensing (Pay per input).
I’ve played around with this one a while back for photogrammery. It works well.
Didn’t know it could also import point clouds directly.
Don’t like the “Pay per export” pay model.
Is there a good alternative that is either free or a one-pay-only, with no subscription or anything like that?
Oof, nothing really. It’s all mostly subscription based. Have you tried the tools within CloudCompare?