Have the rigging tools been updated since Poser 4?  I am debating whether or not to upgrade...

Thanks,
  Darren

Lots of bug fixes and tweaks, but essentially they are the same.

But if you are planning on making content to sell, yer gonna want proper bump maps, not Bum files, and most products now come with mat poses, or materials or material collections, not possible with P4.

Also, you can't setup displacement, or any specialty shaders either.

"Which version of Poser is best for rigging?" None. They all suck. But seriously, versions 5 and 7 have some differences but it equals out to the same nearly dysfunctional mess. Although Poser 5's joint editor is superior to Poser 7 (in my opinion)--mainly because you can see the falloff spheres through the model in outline mode and the inner and outer zones are bright red and green in wireframe--Poser 5's Setup Room has an infuriating bug that can make it impossible to name a bone. Overall, I would recommend Poser 7, but if you have an earlier version of Poser, hang onto it. It might be better in certain aspects of Setup. When in the Setup Room, save every time you do anything as separate files. You won’t regret it.

even though I agree with Paloth about the Joint editor in P5 being superior you should know that there were some subtle changes to the joints in P6 so I would highly recommend getting at least that, nothing earth shattering, but joint falloffs are ever so slightly smoother in P6 and 7 over P5. so I tend to rig in P5 but do my final adjustments in P7.

Thanks for the replies.  Looks like it's time to either upgrade or get Green Briar Studio's Poser Toolbox.

Quote - Thanks for the replies.  Looks like it's time to either upgrade or get Green Briar Studio's Poser Toolbox.

that depends on what you want to do with the rigged figures, as others said if you plan on distributing then upgrading really is the only option as Poser toolbox won't allow you to create proper material files for the 3 most recent versions of Poser, rigging isn't the only reason for upgrading, and in fact is the lesser reason, poser 4 material settings are of little to no use for most poser users these days. for personal use its less of an issue.

Poser 4 was good for fore'sls and topgallants, but Poser 5 does better with mains'ls, spankers, and jibs..;)