METHOD FOR ENCODING/DECODING PROGRESSIVELY THREE- DIMENSIONAL MESH INFORMATION HAVING ERROR RECOVERABILITY

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To reduce burden and transmission time of a network by encoding vertex graph information constituting a connection component and triangular tree/triangular data information to each connection component in accordance with the format of a basic mesh having an independently decodable format. SOLUTION: Small connection components are combined to be within the limits of the size of a data partition. That is, CC1 and CC2 are combined to make CC'1, and what is larger than the size is divided internally while considering the data partition, and CC3 is divided as a small virtual component into many numerical elements CC'2 to CC'K (step 251). For each divided connection component CC, vertex graph information vg and triangular tree-triangular data information tt/td are generated (step 252). The vertex graph information vg and triangular tree/triangular data information tt/td are encoded in accordance with the format of a basic mesh having an independently decodable format.