I've started working with female characters for a project I'm working on, but am having a bit of difficulty with the clothing.  I was using the  Poser 7 woman, Sydney and put her in  shirt and top from Poser World.  I conformed the clothing to her, but he legs popped through, and posing her the clothing wasn't following her movements.  Do I have to use magnets to get these clothes to fit her properly?  What was I doing wrong?  If I have to use magnets then how to a do it.  Magnetic clothing really confuses me.

Ok.. a couple of basics on skirts for poser characters.  When you "conform" an item of clothing to the character it matches the bone structure inside the clothing figure to the bone structure inside the character you conform it too.  

Now, when the bones are bent those mesh areas of the clothing that are designated as part of that bone group will bend with the figure.  This works great for pants, shorts, and most shirts.  Not so with skirts.

When the figure moves forward or backwards eventually the edge of the skirt makes contact with the legs and causes "poke through".  There are a couple of ways of fixing this though, not to worry.

Most quality products put out by vendors use one of two methods, in fact some use both, to address this problem.  They will either add extra bones to the skirt allowing you to bend certain sections of it to allow it to conform to your pose, or they will add morphs that will allow you to make portions of the skirt come out, up, or move side to side.  Many use both to allow the user maximum control.

However if your working with the poser default characters odds are good your also working with very basic clothing that has no such capabilities built in.  That's ok, you still have a couple of options.

First, magnets. The allow you to deform part of the clothing to suit your needs.  There are a lot of really good tutorials on magnets out there, so I won't go into great detail on this unless a followup is needed.

Second, you can do what the vendors themselves do and add additional bones to the skirt in the setup room.  This is a bit more complicated of course and has a few more steps involved, but it gives your clothing the maximum adjustability with the greatest of ease.

Setup room tutorials are also available in abundance, I'm sure you can find one if this notion suits your fancy.

Hope that helps,
Stepdad

Would it be the "Gosforth" Skirt?, if so what you do is add and conform the skirt, then select the hip of the skirt and use the morphs (Built in) to pose the skirt over her legs, or you can use it in the cloth room (its a hybrid).........Steve

There are 3 types of clothing:

Dynamic:  This is clothing that you use inside the Cloth room. It takes longer to work with and there is a bit of a learning curve, but it's not too bad, but the results are more appealing in that the clothing actually looks more natural instead of "posed and stiff".  I have included information about this type of clothing further down.

Confroming- Non Morphing:  This is clothing that you conform to a figure. The clothing is made to fit the base figure.  If you change the shape of the figure you will also have to refit the clothing, which isn't always easy if there aren't any corresponding body morphs in the clothing.  Plus posing a character in positions where they are not nearly upright is difficult.  But many prefer this type of clothing over dynamic.

Conforming-Morphing:This is the same as conforming-non morphing, only there are morph dials that you can turn that have corresponding body morphs for easier fitting.  This is the preferred type of conforming clothing because it's easier to fit. However, it's not without it's problems as you have discovered. It's very difficult to use for skirts and dresses where the legs are bent.

Using a clothing item on a figure that it is meant to be used on, after you have added morphs and adjusted the shape of the body,  can be problematic because the clothes are made for the default figure shape and not the new morphed up shape. So the clothing no longer fits and you get parts of the body showing through the clothing after you add morphs and change the shape of the body.

There are programs that can help fit clothing from one figure to another, or even from the same figure to one that has been "morphed up" using their morph packages. They don't however  help with the bent leg and poke through syndrome.

The Tailor, which can be bought here:
http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=677

Wardrobe Wizard (I use this one and it's great). It can be purchased from PhilC's site here:
http://www.philc.net/WardrobeWizard.htm

Clothes Converter, which can be bought here:
http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=3069&cat=131

Dynamic clothing is really the way to go when working with skirts or dresses because the cloth room will simulate the clothing in a more natural fashion so that it works with the varous body parts, even bent legs.

A nice thing about dynamic clothing is that you can easily use clothing on various figures.  Here are some tutorials on how to use dynamic clothing in the cloth room:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2665209

http://www.philc.net/CC_sampleVideo.htm

http://www.poserfashion.net/howvic3dress1.htm

http://drgeep.com/p5/cr/cr.htm

Here are some links to some great FREE dynamic clothing:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?username=mapps

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?username=svdl

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?username=Stegy

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?username=carib98

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?username=teyikung

It's also possible to make conforming clothing into dynamic clothing:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/tutorial/index.php?tutorial_id=868

And it's possible to take a conforming outfit and work with it in the cloth room so that parts of it act dynamic.  This is an amazing technique. However, it doesn't work in Poser 5. Just Poser 6, and I think Poser 7.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2517340&page=1

And there's Hybrid Conforming/Dynamic - the best of both worlds.

Thanks for your help, I guess I just need some practise or a lot of pant suits, LOL.

There's a third type: smartprops. Mainly used for small clothing items that are rigid or semi-rigid. Most jewelry (rings, bracelets, earrings) is in the form of smartprops. Belts and shoes also come in the form of smartprops.

The different types have different advantages and drawbacks. For example, smart props are good for rigid or semi-rigid attire, they do not deform when a body part bends, where as a conforming clothing item WILL deform - it bends with the body part.
Conforming clothes work well with tight fitting clothes, or clothes that are supposed to be fairly rigid. Most shoes and boots are conforming clothes, so are gloves.
Armor, medieval or otherwise, is also an area where conforming clothes shine, although I have also seen plate armor consisting of series of smart props. 
Dynamic cloth is at its best with flowing, loose-fitting clohtes, such as skirts and dresses. Loose-fitting blouses also qualify for being dynamic cloth. 

The beauty of the system is that it is possible to combine all three types in one piece of clohting. For example, a dress with a tight fitting top and a loose flowing skirt, and rigid metal ornaments hanging from the belt. The top part would be conforming (with a bit of luck the creator made it a "superconformer", a conforming clothing item that automatically assues the morph settings of the figure it is conformed to), the ornaments would be smart propped to the hip or abdomen body part of the dress, and the skirt part would be a body part that must be "clothified" in the Cloth Room.

I can highly recommend learning to use the Cloth Room. It expands a lot of what you cah do in Poser itself.