One of the more interesting aspects of the Baby Boomers' dominance over pop culture is the mass acceptance of childhood and adolescent activities for adults. It's not uncommon nowadays for folks in their 50s and 60s to enjoy or play rock music, read comic books, and play video games, whereas it would have been shocking to see "oldsters" do such things in the 1960s (well, the first two, anyway; video games didn't exist then). And the resurgent popularity of playing with dolls is one of the phenomena responsible for the best-selling computer game series of all time: The Sims. The game lets you decorate houses and direct activities for dozens of virtual humans. But The Sims doesn't let you directly pull the strings of your digital dolls, and its customization options go only so far.

For the ultimate in godlike control over a 3D character, in reasonably priced software designed for ease of use, only one program will do: Poser. The first few versions were brought to us by Fractal Design and then MetaCreations, but now Curious Labs has taken the reins, and the company recently introduced Poser 5. The new version is incredibly powerful, with some truly jaw-dropping features, but the basic functionality of being able to pose and customize your mannequin with a few clicks of the mouse is still the main draw.

If you've used a previous version of Poser, you'll have no trouble coming to grips with version 5's distinctive user interface. But after using it for a little while, you'll appreciate the enhancements. In the center of the screen is the Document window, which shows the 3D character and any other scene contents. By default, it shows a single view into the scene, but you can switch to a variety of multiple views (e.g., right, top, and main cameras) from buttons on the left side of the window. You can resize the window and change its proportions by dragging a corner, or numerically from a dialog, and reposition on the screen by dragging the title. Incidentally, Poser doesn't use tooltips, but when you point at a control, its name appears above the interface entity associated with the control.

On the left side is a host of iconic camera controls which let you pan, zoom, and rotate the view, as well as switch among a variety of default camera positions. Three of the most useful camera controls also appear just above the Document window. Off to the side, the convenient "dots" feature lets you quickly save and restore up to nine different custom presets for each of three items: UI setup, camera position, and character pose. To the right of the Document window are buttons that let you set the tracking mode; whether the program displays bounding boxes always, never, or only when you're changing a setting or a pose. Here you'll also find switches for depth cuing, in which closer objects are more distinct than farther objects, as well as shadows and collisions, about which more shortly. Also on the right side are controls for setting colors: background, ground, shadows, and foreground, or wireframe coloring.

Also in the main UI are controls for lighting, setting the display style, and manipulating the figure and its parts. You can create and delete lights, position them by dragging circles on a small sphere, change their color, set shadow properties, and more. You can set display style for the entire document, on a per-figure basis (a figure can be a character or a prop, such as an article of clothing), or for each part individually. That's power! Among the display styles are the standard ones such as wireframe, hidden line, and smooth shaded, and some more unusual ones including Cartoon, optionally with outlines. And most of the manipulation date back from the original Poser: Rotate, Twist, Translate, Scale, and so on. There's also the morph putty tool, which lets you manipulate morph targets by dragging in the Document window. I didn't have much luck with this, but the morphing itself works fine, and has been substantially enhanced in Poser 5.

Morphing in Poser mainly means adjusting facial expressions and structure. Earlier versions of the program had a good number of basic morph targets such as Smile and Frown, but Poser 5 takes morphing to a whole new level, with categories of morphs such as Nose, Eye, Ear, Mouth, and even Tongue and Wrinkle. Incidentally, someone should tell the designers that "eyebrow" is one word. Each category has a number of settings for adjusting the facial details to the nth degree; for example, Nose alone has 24! Among these are the length, angle, and roundness of the tip, the width of the base and position of the bridge, and even emotion-oriented settings such as Tension, Furious, and Cry. Another morph category is Full Expression, with overall adjustments for Happy, Sad, Fear, Angry, and Repulsion. Again, some editorial oversight should was needed here: Should these be nouns or adjectives?

The morph-target settings are all adjustable by mouse with dials, and from the keyboard. In addition, a menu available for each setting lets you reset the morph, set limits, and animate the morph (and edit animation keys) using a graph. Most morphs affect both sides of the face equally, but you can split a morph so that it affects one side or the other only. The original, two-sided morph remains intact. All of this control comes at a slight cost: It works only with Poser 5-format figures only. Poser 5 comes with four native models: two adults and two children, one of each sex.

Speaking of animation, it's easy to do in Poser, using the traditional keyframing method. The controls are arrayed along the bottom side of the main interface. Simply go to the frame at which you want to set a key, adjust the pose or a parameter, and continue. Poser offers a reasonably powerful animation editor that lets you move and delete keys, and change interpolation curves between keys.

Another vital part of the main interface is the Library, which is out of sight most of the time, but slides into view when you click a handle on the right side of the interface. This provides access to all the content, including figures, poses, preset facial expressions, hair objects and props such as articles of clothing, and lighting and camera setups. All the human figures come clothed and unclothed (visible genitalia is an option), and Poser also includes a nice selection of animal figures, such as a dog, a cat, a dolphin, and a horse. Also included are cartoon humans and robots. The program lets you apply animal poses to humans, which is kind of fun, although some look pretty silly.

The clothing works nicely; you simply add it to the scene and conform it to the figure that's wearing it. Then, when you manipulate the figure, the article of clothing follows along naturally. Speaking of which, the inverse kinematics that has always been a prime feature is still there: You pull the forearm, and the rest of the body follows as if you're grabbing a real person. New in version 5 is collision detection, so you can prevent body parts from interpenetrating during setup. It can be a bit tricky to use, but once you get the hang of it, you can avoid some awkward-looking poses.

As I mentioned, Poser includes hair objects, but these look like what they are: hair-shaped hats. Those seeking greater verisimilitude can take advantage of the new Hair module, which lets you create strand-based hair. To use it, you select the polygons from which hair is to grow, and then generate guide hairs, each of which controls a patch of surrounding hair. You can set overall growth controls such as length and "pull back," and styling controls such as clumping and kinkiness. You can also edit guide hairs, adjusting their length and applying transforms such as move, rotate, and twist. And to top it all off, you can apply dynamics so the hair moves naturally during animation.

One of the major new features in Poser 5 is the ability to design and use procedural textures. The material editor, called the Material Room, works much like Darkling Simulations' DarkTree program, but in some ways is more powerful. Most of a material's 23 attributes, such as diffuse color and bump, can be wired to a node in one of the following categories: math, such as one of 21 functions, including multiply and divide; variables, such as frame number; lighting, such as diffuse and specular; 3D textures, including marble and wood; and 2D textures, such as bitmap (still and movie), tile, and brick. Each of a node's settings can, in turn, be wired to another node. The possibilities are dizzying.

Equally complex and mystifying is Poser's new Cloth module. Here you can use special dynamic clothing objects to react to figure motion and external dynamic forces, such as wind. For example, a woman does a high-kick, while her loose-fitting skirt follows the motion realistically, folding and draping as if it were the real thing. It's not easy to understand or use, so a detailed tutorial is needed for the typical user. Fortunately, there's some helpful information available on Curious Labs' Tutorials Website, available from the Help menu. But be prepared to spend a lot of time the Cloth module if you want to get it right, especially because it requires mucho computing power. Where are the 50-gigahertz processors when we really need them?

The other Poser 5 modules are the Face and Setup rooms. In the latter, you can modify an object's underlying skeleton, or bone structure, as well as how the object mesh is attached to its bones. Incidentally, even props have bones. And the Face room lets you create customized heads by adjusting morph targets, importing face textures such as digital photos, and even create random heads at the click of a button. I looked at these only briefly, but they seem quite usable and useful.

The included documentation functions well as a reference; it's complete and detailed. But there should be many more tutorials; that's the only way ordinary mortals with limited free time can really learn to use complex software like this. To help resolve this, Curious Labs has created a tutorials Web page (http://www.curiouslabs.com/go/tutorials), but most of what's available there was created by individuals not associated with the company, and the writing and presentation is amateurish. Curious has done a great job of adding advanced new features, but it needs to realize that such features are of little use to most users without detailed, professionally written tutorials.

While I was favorably impressed with Poser 5 overall, I did find some problems. There's only one level of undo, and you can't undo a number of settings. A Zoom All or Reset Zoom would be nice; currently, you can zoom out only in relatively small increments. On the other hand, the wealth of included cameras makes it easy to jump to a desirable view, such as the face or a hand only. You can set the render size in inches, but the Render Options dialog always defaults to showing dimensions in pixels when you reopen it. It does the math correctly, but it'd be nice if it remembered the preferred measuring system. The program is reasonably stable, although it is balky at times, and it's slow starting up and accessing different parts of the library.

At $319 (direct, until the end of the year), $349 after Dec 31, Poser is a true bargain. It offers an amazing variety of features, some of which I haven't had room to mention, and most of which work reasonably well (Curious Labs issues new patches regularly). The fact that it comes with all the content from the previous versions adds to the value, although you'll probably spend the most time with the Poser 5 content. At this price, you can even afford to buy add-ons from the new (and rather disorganized) Content Paradise site, available from the Poser interface.

If you know someone that likes to play with creative software, and has abundant free time to experiment, but hasn't yet discovered Poser, it would make a great holiday gift. And if you're wondering whether to upgrade, I'd recommend it. But by all means, first check some other opinions, at www.computerarts.co.uk/reviews/review.asp?id=998