3D Modeling and Animation: Synthesis and Analysis Techniques for the Human Body aims to cover the areas of modeling and animating 3D synthetic human models at a level that is useful to students, researchers, software developers and content generators. This book provides a reference for the state-of-the-art methods, delivered by the leading researchers in this area, who are invited to contribute to the appropriate chapters according to their expertise. The reader will be presented with the latest, research-level, techniques for the analysis and synthesis of still and moving human bodies, with particular emphasis in facial and gesture characteristics.