"Interesting! I would have guessed that the weight maps would be the hardest part to get to match. Shows how much I know."

The weightmaps usually just need  bit of resmoothing. If you go from a high-res figure or bodypart to a low-res one, most often no adjustment is necessary at all.

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Hmm, one crazy idea:

Would it be possible to transfer a morph made on a high-res object over to a subdivided  low-res object?

Like:

I make a morph with the morphbrush on standard resolution V4.(Which is basically a "frozen" subdivision of V4 17K)

I have done so in the past, and the Morphbrush can easily handle standard V4 or V3.

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Then one would have to transfer that (high-res) morph over to a subdivided V4 17K. (Which basically is the same mesh, just subdivided once.)

Wouldn't that make the creation part of the morph much easier?

I know it's a "detour", but I think the "on the fly" subdivision, especially if it's more than once, is what's slowing the Morphbrush down, not the absolute polygon count of the figure itself. (Within reasonable limits, of course)

Just thinking out loud, so please bear with me.  :-)