Clothing alpha archive

Is there an archive of alpha channel files that would describe various styles/cuts of clothing? I'm looking for something that just describes the cut of the clothing, so that I can then just paint inside the lines. Anything like this exist as a set of archives?

In my experience the outline (or "cut" of the clothes is often the hardest part. When I've made clothing sometimes 70% of the time I have spent on getting that right. So what you are asking for might be unreasonable. That being said, I think someone nice posted a nice Bikini mask outline in this forum some time back.

I have tried to keep a library of the ones i have used for the same reason that you are looking for one, it definitely saves time.

Using my massive intellict... intillict... using my massive brains, I have a simple technique for building your own cut archive. I was messing with prims the other day and I used an old technique for alpha-ing them. Then I tried it with clothes. It seems to be working fairly decently. Well, decent enough.

If you are on PC and have a host that can handle Photoshop plug-ins, then go grab 2D Histogram. And, if you are feeling a little extra frisky, grab 2D Remap.

Filter > Tech Slop

Those are two very simple plug-ins that I did a long time ago and I'm still finding uses for them. Turns out, with a little bit of savvy, they can be used to help with SL clothing making.

The kicker is that you can paint right on snapshots from SL. This means painting right on avatar shapes with mesh deforms and all. But it's only decent - not uber. Then again, my definition of uber is a bit more than most.

I'll throw up some sloppy mini-tuts later. In the mean time, play with those two plug-ins.

Chip, prepare to be amazed.

hehe, I've come to expect it from you, Abu.

Warda, another useful technique for figuring out cuts for various clothing styles is to make a skin out of the templates then take a bunch of reference screenshots of your avatar wearing it. You can then plot lines using the template grid and know just where they'll end up.