1. A method for compression in which a three-dimensional object whose surface defines surface characteristics including at least one characteristic selected from the group consisting of (i) position, (ii) normals, (iii) colors, (iv) texture map coordinates, (v) material surface properties of said object, said object being representable as three-dimensional triangular data defining a plurality of triangles having vertices, the method comprising: (a) converting said triangular data into linear strip format; (b) quantizing individual ones of said surface characteristics; (c) applying variable length compression to a difference between sequential ones said surface characteristics; and (d) providing a data stream representing said three-dimensional object as a collection of data generated in step (b) and step (c).