State of the art character skinning?

So I've been thinking about implementing one of the newer example based skinning algorithms out there, I've got one of the early ones from 2003 but as I am migrating 3d packages I figure now is the time for new ideas. I've done some research and come across real-time enveloping with rotational regression




Which looks great and significantly improves over traditional smooth bind skinning. However it was back in 2007, and I haven't kept as current on research as I would like.

Does anyone know if there are any more recent algorithms along the same lines? There is a lot of example based skinning work out there but all the research I see ties the computation of the skinning weights to the creation of a skeletal hierarchy as well, which will not work for me.