Why does the hip have to be rigid and not able to be smoothed with joint parameters?   What is the secret of getting a smooth transition? 

I dislike modeling setup room rigged clothing because of this and prefer the Soft Body Dynamic clothing.

Any enlightenment would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Pappy

Does your figure have buttocks and thighs? If so and if you are only bending the thighs it is because doing so will not affect the hip.

Grand parent > Parent > Child
hip > buttock > thigh

A child can only influence its parent, it can not influence its grand parent.

Try bending the buttocks.

thanks for answering Phil.  I tried both buttocks and thigh with no effect.  Inner and outer circles also had no effect with joint parameter.  I am now experimenting with the buttocks and thigh areas in size and position in setup room.  Really frustrating.

I am doing this by request but personally prefer dynamic clothing.

This is one of the notorious problems with skirts. (until poser goes to weight mapping-he said wistfully) the issue is that buttocks or thighs, depending on the model you are using and whether they have a buttock group, needs to be really careful of overlapping the hip with the opposite side because if both sides influence the same verteces than they will multiply each other when they are both bent and you will end up with nasty spikes in the mesh. When you have a skirt the problem becomes more pronounced because the fields have to be that much larger. be happy you are using a really short skirt because longer skirts cause even more problems with grouping issues.

I would like to suggest that you try to build a simple rig and see how it behaves first.

I noticed that if you have 2 groups that share the common border and the same parent, this problem will happen.  I think this is why most of the skirts are very short or making with dynamic clothing technique, or having the DAZ's approach of morphing.

Quote - I noticed that if you have 2 groups that share the common border and the same parent, this problem will happen.  I think this is why most of the skirts are very short or making with dynamic clothing technique, or having the DAZ's approach of morphing.

All groups have only one parent.  there would be tears if common borders were shared.  the hip just won't budge at the circled point on the .jpg

thanks for your observation though Amy