Thank you AmbientShade! I'll try that and let you know how it goes. :)

Thanks for your prompt reply, SamTherapy. I'm using the 64-bit version of PP2014 on a Mac that has maxed out specs. Plenty o power. Poser works as expected until I use any conforming clothing, mainly. Smith-Micro has not been able to help me resolve the issue. My figure is based on V4 but is scaled down to be about 5ft 7in and has a lot of custom morphs, so when I add any clothing and conform it I check the options to include scale and morphs when conforming.

Aside from that issue, I'm wondering if I can have an optimized version of my custom figure that 'bakes in' all my custom morphs so I don't have to keep all the morph dials left over from the 3rd part morph packs that I never ended up using. Similar to 3rd party character morphs, I'd prefer to just have a base model with a simple injection that preserves all my custom morphs but does away with all the additional dials, etc. that seem to really bog down Poser. Am I making sense?

I may start over, but it's a tough sell because I've come so far and just lack the expert knowledge to know what the next best step should be.

Oh it looks like the V4.2 portion of that image is upside down... fyi. 

The basic issue stems from the fact that my figure's head is extremely customized with several 3rd party and custom hand-sculpted morphs.  Not to mention she's scaled down to be 5'7".  

Initially I ran into issues with her UV maps.  I'm only just learning mapping/texturing in-depth so bear with me.  I setup the GoZ session as described above - I had my zeroed face and my big smile as two layers.  I subdivided a few times and  on a new layer I sculpted in all the crow's feet and other wrinkles caused by the smile.  

I ran into issues creating displacement maps, after reading/watching some tutorials I finally got them to work.  The only issue was they were getting layed out at an odd angle, rotated about 60 degress clockwise.  So I then tried to manually fix that in photoshop, only to find that when properly rotated the map didn't align with the head material used on the figure.  So I even tried to manually correct that with warping in Photoshop.  I got it lined up and added it to my shader.  After lots of futzing with the displacement value it started looking so-so, but not without a ton of little artifacts and odd bloating.  

At that point I found this runtimedna thread about this very topic.  I immediately noticed their maps looked a lot different than mine.  Not only were they perfectly aligned, they only had the newly sculpted detail.  Mine had info for every existing crevice on her face...  

I followed their steps with a standard V4.2 figure and voila, I got the same results as they did.  I've stripped down my figure to the bare essentials, regrouped her UVs in UV mapper, etc. etc.  While it eased the import process to and from ZBrush, I still get the same overcooked displacement maps.  I've attached both the good v4.2 and my custom map.

Any ideas? (and thanks for reading ;).

So far so good.  One thing I should have clarified -- the smile is already an existing morph on the figure -- but so far the steps I've taken seem to be the way to go:

I exported the smiling head as an object (posed) into ZBrush with GoZ.  Then in ZBrush I created a new layer, set it to "1" and turned on record mode.  Then back in Poser I zeroed the face and exported as an object into ZBrush with GoZ (note: I haven't yet completed the round trip, so this makes 2 exports to ZBrush without re-importing to Poser).  

Since I had record mode on, the zero-ed head immediately replaced the smiling head as a new layer and voila, I have a smile morph slider in Zbrush.  Now I'll sculpt the wrinkles, etc. as a second layer, dial down the smile, export a new displacement map that should fit! 

Fingers crossed. :)

Thanks for the tip! I'll give it a shot and report back :)

Thanks for the tips!  I think I understand each step.  Here goes...

Thanks for the suggestions!  I'll try them out! :)

First of all, thanks very much for your thorough reply, much appreciated!

OK, well, it's a relief to know that nothing I'm describing sounds way out of whack as far as workflows, etc.  I'm overwhelmed by the seemingly infinite paths to the same result in this medium.  I think you're right: it really is just a matter of becoming more familiar with the various morphs.

So to clarify/answer some of your questions...

Quote - Should I have built the character from a zeroed V4.2 base instead of starting from the custom themed character?

I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you building your character based off another character that you purchased?  If so there may be limitations to the character that you purchased and not to the v4.2 character.  For me I build my characters from v4.2 without the character morphs used.  The only reason I buy characters is for the skin.  The only reason I start from v4.2 is because it allows me to have a fresh start in terms of creating unique characters.

Yes, I've purchased a v4.2 compatible character and applied additional morphs to the face and body.  In addition to liking the skin/mats I thought this would be a starting point because the purchased character already has several of the features I want in my custom character.  Perhaps I should start over with the v4.2 base.  Granted, the changes I made weren't drastic, everything is pretty subtle overall which is why I was surprised to have such difficulty with fitting, etc.

Quote - I don't think it's so much about your workflow as it is your familiarity of the morphs that you are using.  The only other options that I know is to sculpt the character so you don't need to mess with the dial.

OK -- I'm still interested in the option of bringing the current mesh into Zbrush or equivalent tool to finalize the details I want.  My only concern is will doing so introduce any potential problems down the road once I start doing more posing/animating or is it a relatively safe technique -- these last tweaks are so subtle I don't see how it could become a problem later.

Quote - I'm curious.  what type of lips are you trying to create?

Just some pretty basic lips I'm referencing from a photo, they (like the nose) just have some unique features that kind of fall in between the standard morph options I've come across so far.  I'm open to purchasing some new morphs for that, but again if sculpting them myself is a viable way to do it, I'd rather do that.  I've attached a shot of both nose and mouth.

For the nose, I've struggled with getting that curved that's created by the nostrils and the bottom of the tip.  Also, this nose has some unique features around the outer nostril area -- notice the little crevice running up along the side of the outer nostril flesh.  This seems to be a pretty unique feature and I've had no luck getting any of the morphs to recreate this effect, even approximately.

The mouth is a little easier, but also kind of unique. The upper lip has been the tricky part.  It's pretty thin compared to the average mouth. Plus the philtrum peaks are kind of rounded off and faintly defined.  Finally, the outer portion of the upper lip, it's height and curvature -- another feature that I've struggled with.  All of the morphs I've used create too much of a tapering for the height.  In this photo, the height remains pretty consistent up until right before the edge and then it curves up.

I'm beginning to think I should sculpt these myself. 

So I guess my next question is are there any red flags, best practices, etc. to sculpting details in ZBrush and then bringing the character back into Poser?  I'm sure there are plenty of tutorials on this, but just curious if there are any common first-timer mistakes that I should avoid...

Thanks again!