The loss of the Charmers faces left me without any new mask-type elements for the coming update. The existing DMA faces are perfectly usable with the new content, sure, but a new face would help stamp a sense of identity onto these new bodies. 

 

I decided I'd do that by taking all identity away. 

 

 

I'm actually a big fan of featureless faceplates like this (the chrome mask version of Cobra Commander was absolutely a favorite) and it's been in the back of my mind for a while that the DMA set could probably use one. I hadn't really prioritized it, though, and didn't get around to trying to make one until just now. But it felt appropriate to fill the void left by the Charmers faces with something like this. 

 

 

Finding a source for one once I actually started working on it wasn't too much of a question, as the helmet from Billyro's Peacekeeper armor immediately sprang to mind. Whether that would actually be usable was a bit more in question, as it was a fairly low-poly mesh that had to be cut out from the rest of the helmet model, then hammered into shape until it worked decently with the existing DMA headgear. Getting it to work with the Aster in particular was tricky, as I had to balance the tendency of its mid-line ridge to clip through the rather closely-fitted forehead of the Aster with some... other considerations that I'll get into later. Despite my doubts, I eventually managed to get a shape where everything fit together reasonably well on the Aster...

 

 

...as well as the other headgear... 

 

 

...and the Gynoid hair sets.

 

 

This might be the only face that I actually think looks good with the A-model hair. 

 

It's built to be used in pretty much the same way as the existing faces, with the model on slot 44 so it should be compatible with nearly any slot 31-based headgear. That pretty much covers all of the Vanilla 'open' helmets, as well as things like the mage hood, the instance of which from the DCC Extras pack it pairs quite well with.

 

 

It should also be generally usable with wig sets like the one I've been working on, although there are some parts of the upper edges that might clip through some of the more closely-fitted hairs a bit oddly. But on an adequately roomy design it works just fine.

 

(Vega!)

 

The one other point of conflict is with the Bikini Armor crests that retain the chinstrap element. Literally, as the bottom point of the Peacekeeper mask juts through the chinguard just a bit. (Told you that could be problematic.) I could adjust the point a bit, as this is still in the prototyping stage, but I'm not entirely inclined to as I managed to get an angle on everything that pairs rather nicely to the chinguards on the Aster/Ripper, and even more so with the faceplateless Gilded Helmet. Which makes this also the only thing I think looks good with that, so I'm not keen on messing with it.

 

 

I'm slightly unsure on what direction to take the textures, however. It's a bit more reliant on retaining the original textures than I had hoped it would be, particularly in that the eyes are entirely texture-based. My original conception of this kind of faceplate involved open eyeholes that the standard DMA glowing eye elements could shine through, but that's basically impossible here. I had also considered giving up on the eyes and going full Cobra Commander by doing the usual Dwarven tile texture swap, but for whatever reason that texture does not work out all that well here.

 

 

The defects and roughness in the textures is way too prominent, and losing the eyes really took something away from the character of the base mask. And I honestly like the way the contrasting steel face looks amid all the Dwarven brass, so I'm probably just going to carry over the original textures as-is. For at least one version. I do kinda think that there's some value in having a Dwarven-colored version as well, but I haven't quite figured out the best way to get that. Simply swapping in the bronze cubemap texture kiiiiiinda works but it tends to do some weird things color-wise as the light moves, with the base steel color showing through at some angles. So I'm probably going to have to do some experiments with editing the original textures to see if I can get something that works better.

 

 

But this is actually the most recent and probably last of the last minute additions I wanted to tuck into the mod before releasing the update. As for the others, well, let me get this one out of the way first.

 

 

The original Dwarven breastplate from the Remodeled Armors mod is an interesting design, but it's also quite difficult to work with. It's extremely low-poly, which may have something to do with why it was completely replaced for the BodySlide-capable versions of that mod. That's less of a problem in fixed-weight applications, which is why I dug it back up when I was sourcing parts for the robotic DMA chests. I even finished off a full robot chest using it, after entirely too much hassle, only to find during testing that the much more close-fitting collar conflicted terribly with the large baseplates of the existing DMA replacement heads. Since that collar was also one of this mesh's charm points, that chest got quietly abandoned. But while working on the Doll bodies I couldn't help thinking that a couple of slightly more armored options would be nice, and that the new necks that I had to develop for the Dolls would work just fine in this mesh's collar. That BodySlide-unfriendliness was a problem, though, along with my disinclination to pump up the parts count too much and the fact that the mesh wasn't designed for the UUNP family bodies. So with those limitations in mind I just found ones that were close to the breastplate's high and low weight models and then hammered it down to fit. Well, with an added caveat after finding that the high weight model fit best on the UUNP base shape chest.

 

 

Given that this was one of the body sets that I had used for the robot-legged pelvises, it only made sense to fit the low-weight model onto a chest using the UNPF-based waist shape to match up with the other robo-leg set. Thus the UNPetite High version was dragooned into service. For these I've limited them to use on just the flesh and rubber versions of the torso, both to keep the model and parts counts down and also because the stone and metal versions don't really need the extra defense. These also have the breast motion removed, as the breastplate does not have enough polys to support it even if I didn't hate jello-metal. I did experiment with reducing the bounce to just the exposed underboob, but it... did not turn out well, and had to be abandoned. 

 

I've got some more pictures of these, but first... I want your skulls.

 

[Danzig Intensifies]

 

Well, I mean, I am planning on releasing this around Halloween. And I mentioned above how I liked the idea of doing something that exemplified how the Charmers faces got ripped out of the mod. A skull head is something I've been half-considering revisiting since the original DCC version. That was one of the earlier things I did for that mod, and it had a slight flaw in that when I built it I made no real effort to fit it to the actual human headshape. The skulls there are just the clutter models with only very minimal adjustments and alterations, roughly positioned into the head's space. Their shape didn't work well at all with most human-use headgear, which resulted in me having to do versions of several parts fitted specifically to the skulls. That redundancy always kind of annoyed me, but I simply never got around to reshaping the skulls to fix it. 

 

Here, I did. 

 

 

The changes are quite extensive. The face had to be shortened, the eye sockets enlarged, and the cranium especially had to be ballooned out some to actually fill the head space's volume so it now actually fits helmets properly. It's pretty much matched to the volume of the DMA Preserved Brain, and uses a lot of parts taken from that model for its robotic fittings. And like the Brain and the DCC skulls, this continues to be a head replacer using slot 30, so there shouldn't be much in the way of slot 31 equipment that it really conflicts with. The face is a bit more of an issue, as it has a lot of jutting elements that couldn't really be toned down without detriment to the model. As such it has poor compatibility with almost all of the face parts. The existing DMA faces certainly won't work on this, as they tend to be much shorter, and I can't make any promises in regard to whatever ends up happening with the planned Dibella pack faces. But there is one bit of compatibility that will not actually matter for you guys: I used a couple of the Charmers masks to find the bounds of the skull's face. As such...

 

 

Those faces were ripped away, indeed. But that trick is one that I'm sadly going to be the only one who gets to play with. So instead I made the effort to build in a different trick:

 

Boo.

 

Yep. Not only did I have to reshape the Peacekeeper mask so that it would work with the DMA headgear, I also went out of my way to shape it so that it could be used on the skull heads. Finding the point where it would fit between the two was a pain. But the result amuses me. 

 

 

As for the skulls themselves, they're matched to the material variants of the Type XXX bodies; stone, brass, rubber, and the original bone texture for the flesh version.

 

 

There's some texture-based limitations on how well these match their bodies. The texture mapping joins along the top of the cranium in a fairly noticeable way, and the normal maps smooth out there in a way that becomes especially obvious on the shinier versions. The stone texture maps rather poorly to the model, with the marble veining becoming quite obscured. Messing around with various settings netted some pretty good lighting response, although it continues to be a little bit off from the body parts.

 

 

The rubberized version was even harder to get matched, largely due to the effect of the skull's original normal map which had to be kept to retain the detailing. Frankly, after a certain point I just stopped trying. It looks good enough.

 

 

They're just the full human skull, at least for right now. I may carry over the bloody and partial variants at some point in the future, but as the models need pretty extensive reshaping I'm not exactly in a rush about it. They do have one option part specific to them, a pair of more eyeball-shaped glowing eyes on slot 44 that tuck into their sockets.

 

(Skeletor? Is that you?)

 

I'm honestly a bit iffy about those- I feel the creepy skull effect works better without them- but since I already went to the trouble of building them I figured I'd toss them in. They can also be used with the existing DMA head types, although they're just a little bit too close together to fit into the detailing right. Conversely, the existing 'Null face' set of eyes can work with the skulls, but again the fit isn't perfect. I'm also not entirely sold on keeping the skull eyes red. That bit uses the same Dwarven button mesh as the existing eyes, just with the color of the emission changed, but for whatever reason the red just doesn't want to work out as well as the original whitish-blue. Might change it back, if I can be bothered. 

 

All of this stuff will be part of the Type XXX update. The skulls and the Peacekeeper mask work very well with the robotic parts, yes, but for various reasons I'm not going to include them as part of the robotic parts-only .esp file. The main one honestly being that I already baked that off and redoing it with these included would be a pain, but also, for the skulls specifically, because there's a bit of a hidden intent for them to pair up with some of the other Type XXX parts. I didn't bother to make versions of these fitted with the large baseplate of the original DMA heads, only ones using the rebuilt Doll-fitted neck. As a result of this the skulls by themselves can't be used on a non-DMA body without risking a giant gap at the neckline... Unless you use it with the slot 45 Doll collar I built specifically for this kind of use. Pair that with the Variable models of the feet and the Variable hands that were tossed in for just this sort of situation, and...

 

 

Can't keep a cyborg down.