Abstract: In order to adapt bitstreams to the heterogeneity and variation of network bandwidth and different graphics processing capabilities of network terminals, the concepts of rate scalability and resolution scalability are introduced into mesh compression. A progressive mesh compression method based on wavelet transform is proposed which can generate the bitstreams with both rate and resolution scalability. In the proposed method, each subband is encoded independently. The wavelet coefficients in each subband are scanned into a sequence in a determined order, then are quantized and bitplane encoded. In order for the decoder to know at which vertex each wavelet coefficient should locate, an adaptive subdivision information coding algorithm is designed. The experiment results show that the bitstream size of the proposed method is about 70% of that of PGC method. The proposed method also possesses the resolution scalability PGC does not possess.