In another thread, it was pointed out that the MAT spheres themselves don't necessarily present a great advantage over weight mapping.  I would favor weight mapping, because the sphere-driven joints can't have the same level of customization and are necessarily more approximate.  But I can see the point, after some thought.  The problem with Poser's joints seems more to be the splitting of the mesh than the use of MAT spheres.  The mesh-splitting creates limits with welding and allows a joint to deform only its body part and parent body part.  Lose the mesh-splitting, apply a skeletal method, and all sorts of problems will disappear, with or without weight-mapping, IMO.  

I'm very curious about how this new rigging system works, and what it can and can't do.  What has been added or changed?  Can a series of body handles now be used in chain-fashion to deform a single mesh?  Can Wardrobe Wizard successfully transfer the new style rigs when converting clothing?  Can the new joint system fix knees which look terrible when bent beyond 90 degrees, or bottoms which become horrible taffy blobs when the legs are bent?  What can be done?

===========================sigline======================================================

Cage can be an opinionated jerk who posts without thinking.  He apologizes for this.  He's honestly not trying to be a turkeyhead.

Cage had some freebies, compatible with Poser 11 and below.  His Python scripts were saved at archive.org, along with the rest of the Morphography site, where they were hosted.