Skeletal hierarchies can also be refined now, breaking any bone in the chain into two or more bones. Squash and Stretch has been added to bones, though combining this with IK requires a lot of set up. The Skin modifier has been improved greatly, to the point where it is a functional Skinning option. This is similar to features in Physique, but much easier to use. Furthermore, while Physique creates parametric deformations, the 3ds max 4 Morph Angle deformer lets you reposition vertices at a given joint angle and drive it as a direct Vertex deformation.
Skin now supports Twisting, saving envelopes, and excluding bones.
Bone influences can also now be visualized in shaded mode, vastly speeding up the process of tweaking. Flex has been upgraded to support soft body dynamics and springs, improving on the results seen with the previous version. While far from a serious soft body dynamics approach, Flex does allow for the creation of convincing simple soft body dynamics, even simple cloth. Another clever new feature is the Point Cache modifier. It allows the vertex animations of an object or character to be collapsed and stored on a disk.