I mentioned how I'm using the upper torso core I built for the Bikini Set's robot bodies as the basis for the new cores, yeah? This thing:

 

 

Here's the problem with this: it was built totally slapdash. I was a lot more concerned with figuring out how to get the weighting working when I built those bodies, and didn't put a whole lot of effort into this bit until the very end, after I got the crossbow bits cut out of the Sphere's model and started slapping them on for detailing. As a result, the whole thing is pretty noticeably, well, crooked, if you give it any kind of close scrutiny.  

 

This sort of thing can be really fucking obnoxious to deal with in Outfit Studio. If there's anything that program needs... Well, the first is still a 'duplicate mirrored' tool, but the second is some sort of snap-to-grid system. So I've spent most of the last few days on making tweaks and fixes to this thing, all by eyeball.

 

The first problem that jumped out at me when started taking a closer look at alignments was the frame for the heart crystal. That thing somehow managed to slip by me not just crooked, but outright askew. But since I had gotten all those nice new rings ripped out of the Scroll Chamber model, I decided to scrap it and build a new frame.

 

 

My next target was more of an aesthetic issue. I used the Atunment Sphere because it happened to be a sphere model that I had converted and handy, and because it was less glaring than the spheres I was using for the shoulders, but it's always kind of bugged me that it effectively duplicates the Dwemer symbol on the crest right above it. It's like when DC's costume designers give Batman a bat-symbol belt buckle right under the big one on his chest. It always looks like garbage. So I swapped in the nice little moderately detailed sphere mesh I pulled alongside those rings. Works much better, I think. 

 

 

Just those two changes lead to a distinct improvement.

 

 

But losing the original heart crystal frame left a dead space under the neck plate that didn't balance well with the head. Fortunately ripping apart the Centurion gave me the perfect piece to put there. 

 

 

Those altogether are the only major changes I'm making to the basic design of the core, though. And none of them really took all that long. No, the real time eater's been getting all of the other existing parts maybe kinda sorta lined up right. The shoulder plates in particular were terrible. I made those by compressing down the existing pipe hub piece and then duplicating it, but the part wasn't quite square when I did the compression, causing it to be pretty distinctly canted. Which in turn leads to the whole line of the assembly to seem like it's at a weird angle when viewed from above. The basic fix there was to just flip one of the plates so that the angles complemented each other, since I didn't have high hopes of getting the parts square even if I tried building them again. 

 

 

But from that came hours of minutely adjusting damn near every other part in the hopes of getting them to at least look like they weren't built by drunken Falmer. 

 

 

Spot the differences, win no prizes.

 

I eventually ended up with something that still isn't perfect, but it was fixed enough that I just gave up on doing anything more to it. 

 

 

From there I could finally move on to adding in the new armor pieces... And then go back and spend another hour making more tweaks to get things lined up better with them. 

 

But after that, adding in the armor. The Sexy breastplate came first, since it required no modifications as far as the front end went. It's roughly the same shape as the existing Remodeled breastplate but a bit more spacious, so the tanks that were designed to fit snugly into the Remodeled had no issues tucking in here.

 

 

The issue was that the Sexy version has significantly less space at the back, so the ridge on the core's backpiece clipped through. But that was easy to solve by just scooting the offending part forward a bit. Building the body elements as distinct and coherent parts like this makes fixing such problems much easier. 

 

The Spice breastplate tested that a bit.

 

 

Being much more 'skintight' than the other two, it got clipping at both ends and around the neck. So fixing it was a bit more involved, requiring repositioning and elongating the bosom tanks, shrinking down and scooting in the backpiece, and some very light massaging with the deflate tool to get the front of the neck, at least, clip-free. The back of the neck was pretty much a lost cause but it's also not very noticeable thanks to the model's high collar.

 

 

Definitely worth the effort, though, as the curvaceous shape adds a quantifiable level of interest to the robotic design.

 

 

And having the three options with their varying levels of openness for showing off the internal elements adds a nice bit of variety.

 

 

I've also tossed together some test cases for the modular arms:

 

 

These are built entirely on the Hands slot for now. I'm still not 100% on if I want to do it this way or have the shoulders as a separate part, but this is easier for the concept testing. I'm also not entirely wedded to the Gynoid shoulder design. My initial thinking for those had some kind of armature connecting the wing pieces to the core torso or some other element that would mesh the two and not leave those wing bits hanging, but I'm having a hard time finding something that doesn't end up looking lousy in motion. So I settled for just shoring them up with that little arch piece and some other filler. Actually doesn't look too bad, but I can't help but feel it's all a bit lacking. 

 

Regardless of that, the arms being swappable is working out very well. Much more functional than my initial 'whole and distinct bodies' concept. 

 

 

I also seem to have lucked out and avoided any really dire clipping between the arms and the breastplates. That was kind of a given for the Sexy version, given how wide open it is, although the big Bikini model spheres do kinda push it...

 

 

...but I was particularly worried about the interaction between the Spice chest and the wings on the Gynoid shoulders, given that they clip horribly on the -BAF- set in most presets. But building both of them to the UUNP base shape seems to have resulted in them only just barely clipping at the edges, which is much more tolerable.

 

 

So that gets the core revamped and the breastplates integrated, but I'm not quite done with the upper torso yet. Got a few more things to experiment with before I can start moving south and work on the various hips I'm going to need...