Abstract: Single and progressive-resolution coding algorithms for the compression of 3-D polyhedral meshes are disclosed. In the single-resolution mode, the mesh topology (or connectivity) is encoded by a constructive traversing approach applied to the dual graph of the original mesh while the mesh geometry is encoded by successive quantization and the bit-plane coding (achieved by context arithmetic coding). In the progressive-resolution mode, the mesh is represented by a coarse approximation (i.e., the base mesh) and a sequence of refinements. Both the base mesh and the refinement operations are entropy coded so that a series of mesh models of continuously varying resolutions can be constructed from the coded bit stream. Topological and geometrical data of a 3-D mesh are encoded separately according to their importance and then integrated into a single bit stream.