If we can figure out how to get Riptide working for you (see my post above), all your grouping issues are easily solved.

Without Riptide, the only thing that defines a 'group' is separate mesh objects.  If it is all in one mesh, you get just one group (whether the polygons are welded to each other or not).  If you have more than one mesh object, you will get more than one 'group' (and obviously, the polygons can not be welded between to separate mesh objects.

With Riptide, you set up your groups using Selection Tags and a Riptide 'Group Tag' to track them.  Then it doesn't matter if they are in separate meshes are all in one mesh, welded together, or not - you have complete control over the group boundries.

Material zones are a separate entity from 'groups'.  Groups are only used in Poser for figures (like you are doing here), to define which polygons belong to which bones.

While Riptide is not Poser 'specific' (it's more Wavefront .Obj file format specific), the reason I wrote Riptide in the first place was to ease the process of creating Poser content (it's what I use C4D for), without losing all the material zone and group info that C4D's built-in import/export does.

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