1. Speeding up the viewport (Ver.4+)

If you are like me and like working with editable poly's for the modelling power they posses then you have probably noticed the decrease in viewport performance when working with multiple or higher poly models. The same performance decrease can be noticed when you have a meshsmooth in the modifier stack. This is becuase your processing power is used up trying to calculate quads which are more computationaly hungry than the native polygon which is tri. To fix this little problem you can just place an 'Edit Mesh' modifier on the top of the stack and you will notice a drastic increase in performance in the viewport when navigating around your model.

2. Reshaping Bones (Ver.4+)

If you dont like the fin options that bones offer there is a solution for you. Place an 'Edit Mesh' modifier on top of the bone and reshape the bone the way you would like to have it shaped. You can fit the bone into your model a little better this way, you can now use this skeleton as a proxy mesh of sorts becuase the bones represent a close shape to the model its self.

3. More Morpher Tricks (Ver.4+)

When rigging the face (Tutorial coming soon) with 3DStudio max I use a combination of Bones(skinning) and Morph targets. For example the Jaw and the eylids are controlled by bones and the lips are controlled with morph targets. When skinning my models I like to have a singular mesh instead of a seperated head and having to use blending(maps) to hide the seam. But on the other hand I dont want to have complete models including the body for the morphs. To accomplish this is simple, select the head object with the morpher modifier on it, then above the morpher place an edit mesh modifier and attach the body to the head, weld the joining vertexes together and you now have a singlular mesh. Put a skin modifer above the edit mesh and you are done. Make sure that an UVW mapping is below the Morpher so that the morphing and the skin affect the mapping. Because the body is attached after the vertex count is calculated for the morpher this method does not have any adverse effects on the morpher.