Ok, I believe I found out the cause...each of the 13 meshes will obviously have it's own surface...so I had an overload of surfaces.
So, I suppose the question is in order...can I somehow avoid the vertex manipulation problem (DX7 bone animation being so slow) while still having all pieces be in a single mesh and thus a single surface?
So, I suppose the question is in order...can I somehow avoid the vertex manipulation problem (DX7 bone animation being so slow) while still having all pieces be in a single mesh and thus a single surface?