Abstract: Disclosed is a scheme for creating, manipulating and transmitting images of a 3-D object through networks. A useful layering coupled with vector quantization allows an efficient combination of compressing and encoding of both the topology (connectivity) and geometry (vertex coordinates) of polygon meshes such as triangles. Connectivity information is contained in both generalized triangle strips and exception strips, the latter characterized by triangles for which all three vertices lie in the parent vertex layer. Geometry encoding is achieved with a productive vector quantization scheme which uses correction vectors for which distortion is merged into a following correction vector. Progressive connectivity transmission is achieved by using both intra-layer and inter-layer decomposition and reconstruction. The process encodes connectivity and geometry separately. Encoding of 3-D objects having left-right mirror symmetries using the process is described.