An example method includes receiving a plurality of points that represent a point cloud; representing a position of the point in each dimension of a three-dimensional space as a sequence of bits, where the position of the point is encoded according to a tree data structure; partitioning at least one of the sequences of bits into a first portion of bits and a second portion of bits; quantizing each of the second portions of bits according to a quantization step size, where the quantization step size is determined according to an exponential function having a quantization parameter value as an input and the quantization step size as an output; and generating a data structure representing the point cloud and including the quantized second portions of bits.