OK…thanks NoOne. I figured as much, but my programmer is already on my butt for the bone count 
Dang coders are always lookin’ to the artists to jump thru hoops to conserve resources. What’s piddlin’ mesh monkey like me to do? 
I think I’ll stick to using TSM for the spine & legs, and do my own setup for the arms. I’m don’t normally use IK on the arm hierarchy anyway, but one of those rare instances where it would help came up and I was hoping for a quick fix (aren’t we all )
Hey Tito! I’ll be contacting you this eve when I get home from work (yea…I’m still doin’ the CAD day gig., much to my chagrin 
).
Oh yea…yea I still use A:M v8.5L. Skipped that whole madness that was v9. I’m still not sure about v10. Looks like just about everyone that knew how to get the most out of A:M on the Animaster list has moved one. This, coupled with the fact that their v9/10 manuals are nothing more than overblown sales brochures doesn’t exactly get me motivated to upgrade. And that stoopid subscription policy grates my behind.
But, you know me, I’m pretty much the king of 3D on the cheap and I’ll use whatever I can afford to get the job done the fastest. I’ve even figured out ways to get mesh/UV data out of gmax…so I been doin’ some sub-D stuff using the meshtools scripts.
I must say that I like the Sub-D method a lot better than Hash’s spline patches. I like the “sculpting” philospy of “define the volume first”, then add the details. It’s totally the opposite of A:M, which doesn’t let you easily add detail to areas of the mesh. V10 looks like it may have a couple new modelling features which will help out a bit here (“stitching” & “maintain curve”).
If they actually work, that is.
Egads…I just realized that I’ve like totally hijakked Steves’ thread!
Sorry guys! 
)
, I’m very interested in seeing this setup machine at work… so I hope this forum fills out with alot of good A:M stuff…