@kephale: I wish I had more enthusiasm for digging into MeshLab code. They definitely have a lot of algorithms and, except when the app crashes, can handle a ton of polygons. Unfortunately, I think the interface is confusing. There isn't much documentation and the filter dialogs don't really do a very good job of explaining what they do or how they should be used. Lots of trial and error for me, but maybe I'm missing something.
I've looked at the source code and either don't know C++ well enough or something but I just feel like extracting the gist of an algorithm will be tough to do.
I know you are interested in just linking into the existing code, but I'm not sure how that could be done.
For example, take one color filter: smooth laplacian face color
The dialog has a entry field to control how many iterations are applied.
There is no information about what this filter is actually doing.
It's all magic.
I'm looking at the VCG source for this function and it's still magic.