Strange problem with "skin" modifier and new bips in Alchemy exports

[tommyboy]

As you may know I also make meshes for the Marvel Ultimate Alliance Game.
Although the standard Freedom Force type Biped and Physique modifier work with the MUA Alchemy engine, MUA is modelled with the "skin" modifier rather than "physique", and the Biped has 3 spine links rather than FFs 2 spine links. So to make my meshes look better I'm switching to these settings.
Now if I add the "skin" modifier in place of the "physique" on a standard 2 spine link FF type Biped, all is well. The mesh exports fine.
But if I go into Figure Mode and add the third spine link (Bip01 Spine2), I get a weird problem where the upper chest collapses in as if the spine link were tiny. Below you see how the mesh exports to alchemy on the left and how it looks in Max on the right:


If I make a new 3 spine linked Biped from scratch and "skin" modify a mesh to it, I get something very much like this:


I am at a loss to explain this, and hope someone else knows what is happening and how I can fix it.
At one point I made a new second Biped (bip02 etc) and "skin" modified the mesh to it, leaving all the bips unhidden. When exported, all the bips were tiny. In the right places, but tiny. The size that they revert to if you select one and click "reset pivot" under the "hierachy" "pivot" roll-out". Now, why "skin" would "reset pivot" on only NEW bips when exporting to Alchemy I have no idea. But it's as close as I have come to a theory as to whats going on.

For the record, I get this in two different versions of Max, 4 and 5 (the only versions that I have access to and Alchemy exporters for), and with a variety of different meshes.
At one stage a few days ago I thought I'd cured it by taking a physiqued mesh I'd been playing with, cloning it, deleting physique and then skin-ing it. But I havent been able to duplicate it since, and it may just be that I inadvertantly exported the physiqued one instead of the skin-ned one.

Any one have any ideas? 

[Volsung]

Did you try to apply a 'reset X form' on the mesh before adding the skin modifier?

(ps:Meshsmooth and his equals that automatically make a mesh denser are barbaric options for video game meshing)

[tommyboy]

Did you try to apply a 'reset X form' on the mesh before adding the skin modifier?

I have now.... :(
Thanks, but it didn't help...