What program do people recommend for custom morphs and especially head shapes?

Most people that have the cash use ZBrush, you can use just about any modeler to create morphs. Helps to use one that is a little more organic modeling friendly, Something with brush tools... With ZBrush there is GoZ which imports your morph work into poser without alot of scaling issues that you would encounter prior. I'd say the biggest path to Poser problem with external morphs is the comparitively tiny native scale of Poser objects, these are things you will have to overcome variously for the different modelers you might use.

If you can tolerate Blender that's a good one. I use an older copy of ZBrush that will run on my machine in conjunction with more utilitarian adjustments in Wings. Hexagon also is pretty good for morphing but doesn't work so well on my Mac, alot of people use Hex for Poser stuff. There are others of course. Sculptris? People use that... really anything with brush deformation tools would be the path of least resistance.

Don't discount Posers own morph putty tool and magnets, you can actually do alot of things with those too.

V4 has such a high polycount zBrush is about the only app that works for me personaly.
V5 has a much lower polycount so I could use C4D with her.

"V4 has such a high polycount zBrush is about the only app that works for me personaly.
V5 has a much lower polycount so I could use C4D with her."

Yeah, even the whole V4 mesh can be manipulated pretty smoothly in my archaic version of Zb... Take that mesh into wings and it's lag city. The things I do in wings are more like sliding edges or tightening and nudging small sections of vertices, things at a really micro level usually on isolated exported body parts like the head for instance. I've never encountered any offset difficulties or scaling issues with wings, it's a straight export from Poser as morph target with groups_morph in wings_import into poser with all setting unchecked_apply morph target process.

I've never tried making morphs in Carrara, I've been using it to make plant primitives, lathed polyline objects and scattered grouped objects (like C4D's arrays I guess) occasionally. Being that Poser content runs natively in there I suppose I should look more closely as it has displacement and poly painting tools but I've found making selections somewhat difficult, things can get out of whack quickly... Inexperience.

Let's not forget http://3d-coat.com/

Used it in the past and it's awesome, much more affordable then zBrush and compared to zBrush it's innovative and easy to use..... but that's just my opinion.

I use Blender to make head morphs. The Blender sculpting tools work very well for that. I find them very easy to use. When importing and exporting obj files, it is important to select the option to retain the vertex order. If you bear that in mind, it is perfectly straightforward.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Are there tutorials for importing Poser obj, editing, and returning to poser?

I've read about a dozen tutorials (read or watched video).  They start with "import the OBJ" without giving detail.  I can't even import the OBJ.

didn't say what version of poser or what app ya exporting from.

I mostley use GoZ

Some app's just open obj
Some apps file/import

Quote - I've never encountered any offset difficulties or scaling issues with wings, it's a straight export from Poser as morph target with groups_morph in wings_import into poser with all setting unchecked_apply morph target process.

It really is easy to get things from Poser to Wings and vice versa.  One thing that has happened to me is that Wings seems to truncate material names that have spaces in them.  I've learned to use the "_" when naming mats, but I'd like to see that fixed.

Is Wings still being developed?  Is there a place to make suggestions where they might get noticed?

Many tutorials seem to assume we already know how to do everything. Why, then, would we be seeking the tuts in the first place? Hmm..

To export a figure:

Go to the file menu and click "export"

From the options select "Wavefront obj" and single frame.

In the hierarchy, tick "Universe" at the top to deselect everything. Then tick the box for the figure (M4, Alyson, etc). If you are working on a particular part of the body (face, for example), you can select only the parts that apply.

If you are creating a morph, just check "As Morph Target" in the next window. If you just want to export the figure as a model to make clothing or a prop, you don't need to check anything.

Name and Save your .obj file.

Your modeling program will have an option in its File menu likely called "Load object" or "Import file". Use Poser's Object menu select Load Morph Target. The "..." button will let you browse to find your item.

Your new morph should show up in the Parameters window.

This works for morphs that do not change the number of polygons.

Hope this is helpful.