The V4/M4 heritage, and how it stopped figure development.

Everybody wants to stay V4/M4 content compliant.

Example : They have hip, waist, abdomen, and chest vertex groups. => That was the "old style" rigging system with spheres and so on. There was no other possibility to get "believable" bending in a figure so the torso was split into parts to get it bending properly.

But now we have the weight-bulge map rigging system. Any idea why we keep adding hip, waist, abdomen, chest vertex groups? Because from a technical standpoint this has become obsolete. You can go from the hip vertex group to a torso vertex group to the neck vertex group and weightmap it out.

Ah, ja, the other "hack" buttocks. Any reason why to keep them?

In the above example , the rigging system improved, but the V4/M4 vertex group structure stopped obj file improvements to maintain older content compatibility.

See where this is going?

There are so many ways to "improve" and simplify figure and content building, but maintaining V4/M4 compatibility has its costs in figure and content improvements.