I'm a super newbie to Blender (and 3d modeling for that matter). I have only used Poser and all the pre-packaged stuff which was beginning to cost me an arm and a leg, so I decided to try modeling and rigging etc. from scratch and discovered Blender which had the right price tag and seems to have all the things I need at this point in time. Anyway... on to my question. So I've modeled a character and I rig him up. Now I want clothes for the character and model the clothes. Can the clothing use the existing rig of the model or does it have to have its own rigging and parented to the models rigging like in Poser? Along the same lines, if I were to add a mask to his face, well eye area, can I get that to conform with the facial movement, such as raising with the brows etc, or should I model another head with them mask already on? Does this make sense? Thanks, Ritchard

Roughly speaking:
Poser skeleton = Blender's skeleton
Poser rigging = Blender's envelopes
Poser morphs = Blender's shape keys
Poser ERC = Blender's Driven IPO's

Poser rigging works on clothes semi-automatically by applying the same (or a similar) skeleton+envelopes to the clothes geometry. This is not automatic for the clothes creator. You can try the same thing in Blender by using envelopes for rigging and applying the armature to the character and the clothes. However if you rigged your character with weight painting you can re-use the armature on the clothes but have to weight paint them separately.

Poser morphs also working in a face mask is done by ERC. This is not automatic for the mask creator. The morph has to be added to the mask and one channel has to be set up as driven by the other by editing the Poser pz2.

In Blender you set up your shape keys in the character's face and another in the mask and make the mask key a driven IPO. This is easier in Blender than in Poser.

Thanks for the help.. I'm not using any existing poser elements, so I'm not going to worry about Poser's pz2 files. I was just using what I knew about the way Poser's conforming clothes worked. Everything that I am going to use in Blender will be of my own creation. But I'm learning pretty much everything, Other than texturing, from scratch. I'm pretty much done modeling the character, and then I thought about the clothes. I may for ease sake, Chop him up, and build him with the clothes already part of the model, which will ease up rendering time I'm sure. But, if I do decide to add clothes as a separate item, I can just add them to the same armature as the base model. (think that's what you're saying.) I just have to weight paint it separately, right? (Sorry.. like I said Total super newbie to this whole world, always wanted to learn so I'm taking it one step at a time so I'm just making sure that I'm all clear.) Thanks again.. R

Quote - Thanks for the help.. I'm not using any existing poser elements, so I'm not going to worry about Poser's pz2 files. I was just using what I knew about the way Poser's conforming clothes worked.

Yes I was simply pointing out the Poser way for comparison. It works a lot better in Blender.

Quote - But, if I do decide to add clothes as a separate item, I can just add them to the same armature as the base model. (think that's what you're saying.) I just have to weight paint it separately, right? (Sorry.. like I said Total super newbie to this whole world, always wanted to learn so I'm taking it one step at a time so I'm just making sure that I'm all clear.) Thanks again.. R

You can use the same armature if you want but you can customize the armature as much as you want. If your clothes need extra bones or other rigging features you can completely customize the clothing copy of the armature. 

If you use the same rig for both you apply an armature modifier with the same armature to both the character and the clothing.

ok gotcha... I was a little confused there. Thanks for your help... I'll let you know how it goes. Hopefully I can post something in the gallery soon. Thanks again, R