Methods of animating objects using the human body are described. In an embodiment, a deformation graph is generated from a mesh which describes the object. Tracked skeleton data is received which is generated from sensor data and the tracked skeleton is then embedded in the graph. Subsequent motion which is captured by the sensor result in motion of the tracked skeleton and this motion is used to define transformations on the deformation graph. The transformations are then applied to the mesh to generate an animation of the object which corresponds to the captured motion. In various examples, the mesh is generated by scanning an object and the deformation graph is generated using orientation-aware sampling such that nodes can be placed close together within the deformation graph where there are sharp corners or other features with high curvature in the object.