A system comprises an encoder configured to compress attribute information and/or spatial for a point cloud and/or a decoder configured to decompress compressed attribute and/or spatial information for the point cloud. To compress the attribute and/or spatial information, the encoder is configured to convert a point cloud into an image based representation. Also, the decoder is configured to generate a decompressed point cloud based on an image based representation of a point cloud. A block/sub-block organization scheme is used to encode blocks and sub-blocks of an occupancy map used in compressing the point cloud. Binary values are assigned to blocks/sub-blocks based on whether they contain patches projected on the point cloud. A traversal path is chosen that takes advantage of run-length encoding strategies to reduce a size of an encoded occupancy map. Also, auxiliary information is used to further improve occupancy map compression.