Biological motion perception involves two distinct visual mechanisms. One is based on deriving the global shape of the agent, while the other is based on the local motion of individual dots. In this study, we present a new method that allows us to further characterize the two mechanisms. By measuring azimuth discrimination thresholds for point-light walkers that contain either only local information or only global structure, we avoid a number of confounds which make other methods less reliable. Our results confirm the dissociation between the two proposed mechanisms.