Creating realistic human animation is one of the most important research focuses

and remains problematic in the research field of computer animation.When creating realistic human animation

we need not only realistic human motion and its control techniques

but also effects of vivid body shapes and skin deformation.In this paper

a detailed survey on existing methods for human-body modeling and skin deformations is given

which can help the researchers to have a good understanding of the state of the art in this area.The existing methods are classified into three categories: surface-model based methods

volume-model based methods and hierarchical-model based methods.The advantages and disadvantages of each method are also discussed.Based on the survey of existing methods

it is pointed out that the development of 3D scanners provides a good chance for researchers.We suggest that an important research direction in human-body modeling and skin deformation is: how to combine the advantage of reality of example-based methods and the advantage of flexibility of hierarchical-based methods

in order to create very realistic human-body models and skin deformations.