I have skinned 3D humans in 3D Studio Max with Character Studio version 1 Physique modifyer. Actually it was the Zygote muscleman in 1996 before DAZ branched out of Zygote. Making the muscleman skin behave realistically as a 1 piece mesh in animations without any morphs available took me awhile but I got it to a level where it worked with many of the BIP files(motion files like BVH) available in Character Studio. I have never skinned a Poser human but the tutorials I've read from Dr. Geep and this same thread makes me think the way Poser handles vertex deformation is more sophisticated than the way other higher end 3D applications deal with it since it splits the three possible deformations and creates groups of vertices for each one. As you can see I'm by no means an expert on skinning characters but I can say I have been exposed to it.