Because I've used physique in the past, I'm familiar with its pipeline, and I wanted to see what changes they'd made to it for Max 8. Now I've run into a quirk, and I hate quirks that I don't know workarounds too.
You can convert Physique to Skin using a plug-in on the sparks site. http://sparks.discreet.com/downloads/ The Max 7 version works in 8. Seriously, you'll be happy you made the switch. I wrote my own script go back and forth between Skin and Physique if you can't get that to work.