Acting the part: the role of gesture on avatar identity

Recent advances in scanning technology have enabled the widespread capture of 3D character models based on human subjects. However, in order to generate a recognizable 3D avatar, the movement and behavior of the human subject should be captured and replicated as well. We present a method of generating a 3D model from a scan, as well as a method to incorporate a subjects style of gesturing into a 3D character. We present a study which shows that 3D characters that used the gestural style as their original human subjects were more recognizable as the original subject than those that don't.