The UP! uses ABS, which bonds less easy to itself, making the snap ways support easier to do then with PLA (if you use the same structure with PLA it's much harder to remove)
Support material for fluid printers is a whole different problem, they can do very thin pilars, while with FDM printing you should not try that, as they will break while printing.
Pretty much every support material idea, I've heard it, I've noted it. And I'm saying what I always say "I'm busy, very busy. And I've not seen a single proposed algorithm, only general ideas. General ideas are cheap."
There are 2 problems that you need to solve for support material:
1) Detect where support material is needed.
2) Support those areas
Both problems are currently solved with the quickest solution I could come up with. Just looking at the angle of the polygons and building material straight down.