KineBody Pro

During normal startup, your screen should show the following sequence:

I Agree panel (appears on occasion)

(while the app is loading)

App is ready to use.

A) Drag across the viewing area

1. Click on one of the following buttons^*, to select the body movement mode.
• rotate around blue &/or green axes
• rotate around green axis
• rotate around blue axis
• rotate around an axis normal to screen (red axis)
• translate horizontally &/or vertically
• distance adjustment
2. Drag in viewing area, until you reach the desired position.

---

^* If the blue & green arrow buttons aren't showing, click on the black background, to deselect any selected bones/joints and enable the body rotation modes.

B) Use the white sliders

1. Select a slider by its label:
   

   spin	to rotate around the blue axis
   tilt	to rotate around the green axis
   dial	to rotate around the red axis (i.e., in the screen plane)
   horiz, vert, dist	to shift the body without rotating, in the indicated direction

   
   -- OR --
   
   Select a slider by matching the rotation axis color to the color bar at the end of the slider box. For example, choose the 2nd slider to the right, to rotate around the green axis.



2. Hover over the slider - when it turns orange, drag along the slider.

Problem	Cause / Solution
Movements are slow &/or jerky	Low memory Old browser
Colored cursor doesn't appear, when select from movement palette	The cursor won't change until you begin to move it.
Mac only: Body jumps back to previous position, when using full screen.	While viewing full screen, move cursor to very top of screen (so that Mac OS menu bar appears). Then resume regular operations - the jump problem should be gone.

A) Click in the viewing area

• Select a joint by clicking on its distal bone (or bone 'unit'). The bone color will change to blue or purple.
• Deselect all joints by clicking on the black background. All bones will show in their natural color.

B) Use the 'Moving joint' menu:

• Select the joint by name from the menu. The bone or bones adjacent to the joint will turn blue.
• To deselect all joints, select 'None' from the menu. Any blue bones will revert to their natural color.

This section presents some relevant background and limitations related to Selecting a Joint.

• Not all joints are movable
• Bone units
• Associating bones with joints

Not all joints are movable

Of all the anatomical joints that allow movement between bones, not all can be moved in KineBody, for various reaons:

1. Low ROM: Joints with low range of motion (ROM) are usually not available. For example, joints within the thorax (i.e., thoracic spine and costo-vertebral joints) are excluded.
2. Combinations & Coupling: Related anatomical joints may be combined, if possible. For example, the proximal & distal radio-ulnar joints (PRU, DRU) are combined into a single radio-ulnar joint in KineBody, because they share a common rotation axis. Similarly, at the knee, the patello-femoral joint is combined with the tibio-femoral joint, as the former doesn't normally operate independently of the latter.

Bone units

Sometimes when you click on one bone to select its associated joint, many of its neighbors also turn blue, and the ‘associated’ joint may be some distance from the bone you clicked. This happens when the bone belongs to a KineBody bone unit: a set of adjacent bones that have no movable KineBody joints between them. Some of the characteristics of KineBody bone units are described in this section.

• Purpose: Bone units are designed to simplify joint selection: you can select a joint via any bone in the unit, but at the same time, you can still identify the individual bones.
• Important bone units: The skull (minus mandible) and thorax (ribs, thoracic vertebrae, & sternum) are formed into units; likewise, the central pillar (within hand), and 'midfoot'.
• How to identify: When you hover over a bone and observe its name in the 'Pointing at' box, its unit name will appear as a prefix, if applicable. For example, 'skull / sphenoid' gives the unit name & then the bone name.

Associating bones with joints

In KineBody, you can select a joint by clicking on a nearby bone. In many cases, you select the joint by clicking on the 'bone you want to move'. This feature presumes a special association between bones and joints, which is described in this section.

For the most part, the bones & joints in KineBody are organized into a well-defined 'family-tree' hierarchy, with the following characteristics:

1. For each joint, there's a single associated bone (or bone unit). Generally, the bone or unit is 'distal' to the joint. Each such joint+bone (or joint+unit) combination can be regarded as an indivisibile unit, when discussing KineBody organization.
2. Each joint+bone (or joint+unit) combination attaches to a 'parent' bone or unit. Conversely, any bone can have one or more 'children'. But, no child has more than one parent. Together, these connections define a tree-like logical structure.
3. All connections emanate outward from the thorax as the single common ancestor or 'root' of the tree.

Because of (a), every joint can be selected by clicking on some bone or unit. As a result of (b) & (c), there's no ambiguity as to which bone goes with which joint: the associated bone, for any joint, is the one farther from the thorax, i.e., distal to the joint.

As the root of the tree, the thorax plays a special role. For one, it's the only bone or unit without a parent, and it has no associated joint. Thus, when you click on the thorax, nothing 'happens': there is no joint to select, no special sliders appear, and the thorax retains its normal bone color. [To clarify the last part: when a bone is colored blue, it means the associated joint is currently selected].

Additional information about the bone-joint hierarchy, including the full list of bone & joint names, is provided here.

A) Drag across the viewing area

1. Select a joint rotation axis, by clicking one of the joint rotation mode buttons ( for example: ). Match the button arrow color to the the rotation axis color.
   
   The cursor will change to match the button you clicked, & its arrow(s) will align with the current axis/axes orientation.


2. Drag along a path indicated by the cursor arrows:

   	drag normal to the axis.
   	drag in an arc, around the joint center (= the point where its rotation axes cross).

B) Use the gray sliders

1. Select a slider by its label, or, by the matching the rotation axis color to the color bar at the top of the slider box. For example, choose the middle slider to rotate around the blue (cyan) axis.

2. Drag along the slider, until you reach the desired position.

Problem	Cause / Solution
Movements are slow &/or jerky	Low memory Old browser
Colored cursor doesn't appear, when select from movement palette	The cursor won't change until you begin to move it.
Mac only: Bone(s) jump back to previous position, when using full screen.	While viewing full screen, move cursor to very top of screen (so that Mac OS menu bar appears). Then resume regular operations - the jump problem should be gone.

This section provides additional information re: operation of some special control modes and joints in KineBody.

• Biaxial joint control
• Shoulder (sterno-clavicular & acromio-clavicular)
• Neck & lumbar spine

Biaxial joint control

KineBody Pro also offers a biaxial movement mode for many joints, as indicated by the icon & cursor that combines magenta & yellow arrows. This mode allows you to move the joint in two directions simultaneously, but it can be challenging to use, because rotation around the magenta axis causes the yellow axis to move, and these movements can be accompanied by ’reversals’ in the control behavior. When these situations arise, we recommend forgoing the biaxial control mode, & instead select the magenta OR yellow arrows, to control one axis at a time.

Shoulder joints (sterno-clavicular & acromio-clavicular)

In KineBody, the shoulder has a special property, whereby the scapula is forced to follow the posterior ribs, whenever you move the sterno-clavicular or acromio-clavicular joint. This property requires some special changes to the regular KineBody joint behavior. This is evident if you select the acromio-clavicular joint (by clicking on the scapula): three joint sliders will appear, but only one ('down/upward rotation') is usable, the other two being disabled. Yet, if you move the down/upward rotation slider, you can observe changing values at the other two sliders. In essence, the two disabled sliders are being used to enforce the constraint that makes the scapula follow the ribs. To put it another way, if these sliders were enabled, you could move the scapula unrealistically, away from the ribs, or into the ribs.

A similar situation occurs when you move the sterno-clavicular joint, but it's not readily apparent. In this case, two degrees of freedom (DOFs) for the acromio-clavicular joint are being used to keep the scapula close to the ribs, but the sliders for those DOFs aren't shown.

[Note: the current scapula constraint mechanism can be overridden, to allow full 3 DOF movement, via the Unlimited ROM feature (PoseTools)].

Neck & lumbar spine

KineBody Pro allows you to move multiple spine joints with a single control, in the neck or lumbar regions. You can select either of these 'joint groups', by name in the Moving joint menu. Or, to select the neck, click on the skull (group); for the lumbar region, click on the sacrum. Once selected, you can move the joints using the regular methods, i.e., using the gray joint sliders, or by dragging across the viewing area.

The axes for these groups are rendered as dashed lines, attached to the thorax (i.e., away from the ‘nearest proximal joint’). Both of these effects are consequences of the ‘group’ nature of these joints. For further details, please see Group Motions: Neck & Lumbar Spine.

You can also select & move indivdual spinal joints, using the regular KineBody methods, with a couple of exceptions: of the neck joints, you can't move the Occiput-C1 joint individually, and the same goes for the L5S1 joint in the lumbar region. The reason is that, within the software, the group joint mechanism 'borrows' some of the regular parts from the individual joints. For instance, the neck uses the slider that would normally actuate the Occiput-C1 joint. Again, this is a limitation of the current joint group mechanism.

Multi-purpose Tapping

On touch screens, when you tap in the viewing area, several things can happen: you can 'identify' bones (= view their names), you can select or deselect joints (to set them up for movement), and (in KineBody Pro), you can show or hide bones. You can understand the identifying and selecting behavior most readily via the effect of tapping on a white (uncolored) bone:

• If you tap once on a white bone, it serves to identify the bone, and the bone color changes to orange.
• If you tap twice on a white bone, it serves to select the joint associated with that bone, and the bone color changes to purple.

Additional information about bone coloration is provided in the 'Select a Joint' section below.

A) Drag across the viewing area with 2 fingers You can translate the body in the horizontal (x), vertical (y), or distance (z) directions, at any time, using intuitive 2-finger gestures, as follows:

• To ‘pan’ the body (= move in the x &/or y directions), drag in the appropriate direction while keeping a fixed distance between the fingers.
• To ‘zoom’ (= move in the z direction), use a pinching gesture, i.e., move your fingers closer together or farther apart.
• You can change the position in all 3 directions during a single gesture, by combining panning & pinching.

[Two finger movements are only defined for body translations. For body rotations, use the techniques in the next paragraphs].

B) Drag across the viewing area using 1 finger

1. Tap on one of the following buttons^*, to select the body movement mode .
• rotate around blue &/or green axes
• rotate around green axis
• rotate around blue axis
• translate horizontally &/or vertically
• distance adjustment
2. Drag in viewing area, until you reach the desired position.

---

^* If the blue & green arrow buttons aren't showing, tap twice on the black background, to deselect any selected bones/joints and enable the body rotation modes.

C) Use the white sliders

1. Select a slider by its label:
   

   spin	to rotate around the blue axis
   tilt	to rotate around the green axis
   dial	to rotate around the red axis (i.e., in the screen plane)
   horiz, vert, dist	to shift the body without rotating, in the indicated direction

   
   -- OR --
   
   Select a slider by matching the rotation axis color to the color bar at the end of the slider box. For example, choose the 2nd slider to the right, to rotate around the green axis.



2. Drag along the slider until you reach the desired position.

A) Tap in the viewing area

• Select a joint by tapping on the bone (or bone unit) you want to move. Tap once or twice, until the bone color changes to purple or blue.
• Deselect all joints by tapping on the black background (once or twice, depending on the color). When all are deselected, there will be no blue or purple bones, only white.

Caution (PoseTools users): If you press & hold your finger down (instead of immediately retracting it), you may inadvertently invoke the 'Show/Hide Bones' mode, instead of selecting a joint. If this happens, tap & hold again, to revert to regular joint selection mode - then retry tapping (quicker) to select the joint.

B) Use the 'Moving joint' menu:

• Select the joint by name from the menu. The bone (or bones) near that joint turn blue.
• To deselect all joints, select 'None' from the menu. Any selected bones revert to their natural color (except when using Show/Hide Bones features).

This section presents some relevant background and limitations related to Selecting a Joint.

• Not all joints are movable
• Bone units
• Associating bones with joints

Not all joints are movable

Of all the anatomical joints that allow movement between bones, not all can be moved in KineBody, for various reaons:

1. Low ROM: Joints with low range of motion (ROM) are usually not available. For example, joints within the thorax (i.e., thoracic spine and costo-vertebral joints) are excluded.
2. Combinations & Coupling: Related anatomical joints may be combined, if possible. For example, the proximal & distal radio-ulnar joints (PRU, DRU) are combined into a single radio-ulnar joint in KineBody, because they share a common rotation axis. Similarly, at the knee, the patello-femoral joint is combined with the tibio-femoral joint, as the former doesn't normally operate independently of the latter.

Bone unit

Sometimes when you click on one bone to select its associated joint, many of its neighbors also turn blue, and the ‘associated’ joint may be some distance from the bone you clicked. This happens when the bone belongs to a KineBody bone unit: a set of adjacent bones that have no movable KineBody joints between them. Some of the characteristics of KineBody bone units are described in this section.

• Purpose: Bone units are designed to simplify joint selection: you can select a joint via any bone in the unit, but at the same time, you can still identify the individual bones.
• Important bone units: The skull (minus mandible) and thorax (ribs, thoracic vertebrae, & sternum) are formed into units; likewise, the central pillar (within hand), and 'midfoot'.
• How to identify: When you hover over a bone and observe its name in the 'Pointing at' box, its unit name will appear as a prefix, if applicable. For example, 'skull / sphenoid' gives the unit name & then the bone name.

Associating bones with joints

In KineBody, you can select a joint by clicking on a nearby bone. In many cases, you select the joint by clicking on the 'bone you want to move'. This feature presumes a special association between bones and joints, which is described in this section.

For the most part, the bones & joints in KineBody are organized into a well-defined 'family-tree' hierarchy, with the following characteristics:

1. For each joint, there's a single associated bone (or bone unit). Generally, the bone or unit is 'distal' to the joint. Each such joint+bone (or joint+unit) combination can be regarded as an indivisibile unit, when discussing KineBody organization.
2. Each joint+bone (or joint+unit) combination attaches to a 'parent' bone or unit. Conversely, any bone can have one or more 'children'. But, no child has more than one parent. Together, these connections define a tree-like logical structure.
3. All connections emanate outward from the thorax as the single common ancestor or 'root' of the tree.

Because of (a), every joint can be selected by clicking on some bone or unit. As a result of (b) & (c), there's no ambiguity as to which bone goes with which joint: the associated bone, for any joint, is the one farther from the thorax, i.e., distal to the joint.

As the root of the tree, the thorax plays a special role. For one, it's the only bone or unit without a parent, and it has no associated joint. Thus, when you click on the thorax, nothing 'happens': there is no joint to select, no special sliders appear, and the thorax retains its normal bone color. [To clarify the last part: when a bone is colored blue, it means the associated joint is currently selected].

Additional information about the bone-joint hierarchy, including the full list of bone & joint names, is provided here.

A) Drag across the viewing area using 1 finger

1. Select a joint rotation axis, by tapping one of the joint rotation mode buttons ( for example: ). Match the button arrow color to the the rotation axis color.
   
   


2. Drag in a direction as indicated by the arrow on the mode button:

   	drag normal to the axis.
   	drag in an arc, around the joint center (= the point where its rotation axes cross).

B) Use the gray sliders (PoseTools)

1. Select a slider by its label, or, by the matching the rotation axis color to the color bar at the top of the slider box. For example, choose the middle slider to rotate around the blue (cyan) axis.

2. Drag along the slider, until you reach the desired position.

Problem	Cause / Solution
Movements are slow &/or jerky	Low memory Old browser
Colored cursor doesn't appear, when select from movement palette	Colored arrow cursors are not available for touch screens.
Mac only: Bone(s) jump back to previous position, when using full screen.	While viewing full screen, move cursor to very top of screen (so that Mac OS menu bar appears). Then resume regular operations - the jump problem should be gone.

This section provides additional information re: operation of some special control modes and joints in KineBody.

• Biaxial joint control
• Shoulder (sterno-clavicular & acromio-clavicular)
• Neck & lumbar spine

Biaxial joint control

KineBody Pro also offers a biaxial movement mode for many joints, as indicated by the icon & cursor that combines magenta & yellow arrows. This mode allows you to move the joint in two directions simultaneously, but it can be challenging to use, because rotation around the magenta axis causes the yellow axis to move, and these movements can be accompanied by ’reversals’ in the control behavior. When these situations arise, we recommend forgoing the biaxial control mode, & instead select the magenta OR yellow arrows, to control one axis at a time.

Shoulder joints (sterno-clavicular & acromio-clavicular)

In KineBody, the shoulder has a special property, whereby the scapula is forced to follow the posterior ribs, whenever you move the sterno-clavicular or acromio-clavicular joint. This property requires some special changes to the regular KineBody joint behavior. This is evident if you select the acromio-clavicular joint (by clicking on the scapula): three joint sliders will appear, but only one ('down/upward rotation') is usable, the other two being disabled. Yet, if you move the down/upward rotation slider, you can observe changing values at the other two sliders. In essence, the two disabled sliders are being used to enforce the constraint that makes the scapula follow the ribs. To put it another way, if these sliders were enabled, you could move the scapula unrealistically, away from the ribs, or into the ribs.

A similar situation occurs when you move the sterno-clavicular joint, but it's not readily apparent. In this case, two degrees of freedom (DOFs) for the acromio-clavicular joint are being used to keep the scapula close to the ribs, but the sliders for those DOFs aren't shown.

[Note: the current scapula constraint mechanism can be overridden, to allow full 3 DOF movement, via the Unlimited ROM feature in PoseTools].

Neck & lumbar spine

KineBody Pro allows you to move multiple spine joints with a single control, in the neck or lumbar regions. You can select either of these 'joint groups', by name in the Moving joint menu. Or, to select the neck, click on the skull (group); for the lumbar region, click on the sacrum. Once selected, you can move the joints using the regular methods, i.e., using the gray joint sliders, or by dragging across the viewing area.

The axes for these groups are rendered as dashed lines, attached to the thorax (i.e., away from the ‘nearest proximal joint’). Both of these effects are consequences of the ‘group’ nature of these joints. For further details, please see Group Motions: Neck & Lumbar Spine.

You can also select & move indivdual spinal joints, using the regular KineBody methods, with a couple of exceptions: of the neck joints, you can't move the Occiput-C1 joint individually, and the same goes for the L5S1 joint in the lumbar region. The reason is that, within the software, the group joint mechanism 'borrows' some of the regular parts from the individual joints. For instance, the neck uses the slider that would normally actuate the Occiput-C1 joint. Again, this is a limitation of the current joint group mechanism.