"In another thread, it was pointed out that the MAT spheres themselves don't necessarily present a great advantage over weight mapping."

Oh, man.  I stated that backwards.  The point was made that weight-mapping isn't necessarily better than falloff zones/MAT spheres - as long as the approximate handling of falloff zones is adequate, and it is, even now, for very basic posing.  Umm.

Thanks for the information, Little_Dragon.  I guess that's pretty much what I expected.  I'd like to see what one of the joint setup/rigging experts in the community can do with the new options in the system.

If we can now use more than one deformation zone for a joint, does this mean we could have separate zones for the bending at the front and back of the thigh (or the stretch and crunch zones of any joint, really)?  That might help a lot.

"But with weight mapping, you can use figures with low polygon count, and just subdivide them at render time."

Yes!  Exactly!  With the extra control of weight mapping, I've been able to take a poorly-designed legacy rig from Poser (Vicky 1) and apply it to an inexpertly built, low res custom figure, but weight the joints so that they handle better than in Poser with a high res figure and falloff zones.  It can help a great deal to be able to put the extra effort into weighting, rather than the mesh design or how the mesh is cut.  For one thing, it's easier to make a few tweaks to the weights than to go back and re-work whole areas of the mesh.

===========================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.