You can use various forms of projection mapping, i.e. triplanar projection or surface gradient projection... That way you only need point positions in the mesh

You can use various forms of projection mapping, i.e. triplanar projection or surface gradient projection... That way you only need point positions in the mesh, and no UV or normals. However, I think (at least in games: in VFX we go the other way and have many many "primvars" as vertex/point data) most real-time setups for hero objects end up having points and UVs, and then normals are normally done as a texture.