1. A method for encoding a 3D mesh model, wherein the 3D mesh model comprises one or more components, comprising the steps of determining an orthonormal basis in 3D space for each of the one or more components, wherein Principal Component Analysis based on the vertices of a component is used and wherein each vertex belongs to one or more triangles, and wherein, for said Principal Component Analysis, each vertex of the component is assigned a weight which is determined from the areas of the triangles to which the vertex belongs; encoding object coordinate system information of the component; normalizing the orientation of each of the one or more components relative to a world coordinate system, wherein for each of said one or more components a transformation is used that is obtained from the determined orthonormal basis of the component; quantizing the normalized vertex positions; and encoding the quantized vertex positions.