The bikini revival is inching closer to its final form, but I'm afraid there's some things that I would've liked to have in it that aren't gonna make the cut. The problem is, while most of the pre-existing UNP Bikini content I wanted to include in this has clearly open usage permissions, some of it is a bit more muddled. And while I've sent off use requests to the relevant parties, the response rate has been... Low. In some cases this isn't that big of a deal. There was an existing ground model made for the UNP Bikini that I would've liked to have made use of, but it's not like I'm incapable of building my own. It's just a bit more half-assed. 

 

 

It's a bit more of a shame to not hear back about some of the textures I would've liked to have used. Particularly since including some of the more obscure textures for this mesh was part of the initial idea for this whole thing. I did at least get permission from GreatBizarro to use their Chainmail texture, though, which was quite welcome as it was pretty high on my 'try to use' list. 

 

 

I also went ahead and gave it a couple of variants, including one that adds in some leather straps and edging:

 

 

And a Dwarven recolor of both:

 

 

Those straps are one of the nicer results of the mucking about with new textures I was doing while waiting for responses about the old ones. One of the sets I threw together was sampled from the Farm 1 female outfit:

 

 

...and while it turned out fine by itself, the happy surprise there was that the original texture's belt element was the cleanest, easiest to sample and most noise-free of any of the belt-type parts I'd used thus far. 

 

 

That gave me a set of strap layers that I could simply slap onto just about any project sampling from a texture without its own usable belt element, like say some rugs:

 

 

And mixing it with my previous discovery of how to get rid of the holes in the banner textures let me progress on some ideas I'd had sitting around for those for a while:

 

 

I didn't use it for all of those ideas, mind you. The older straps from the black leather textures felt like a better match for the Imperial banners, for example.

 

 

At the same time I was doing this I was experimenting with various other sets, some of which didn't quite work out. One sourced from the Dragonbone armor in particular is giving me grief, but the part of it that I was the most worried about going in turned out to be the most usable bit of it: the chain texture. 

 

 

It can't really be used for the edging, and Bodyslide can do things to the strap between the bra cups that just looks even worse on a chain, but in the hip, back and neck strap slots it works out surprisingly well. It does get stretched some, especially on the top, but at no point does it look terrible and it adds a nice bit of visual depth.

 

So far I've used this with the Sovngarde rugs:

 

 

A skimpy-ish set based on the High Hrothgar banners:

 

 

And the start of the Thane series:

 

 

I don't know how many of the hold and faction banners I'll do for these. Not all of the designs are exceptionally well suited for adaption to the bikini textures. I have no idea how to get the Stormcloak banner on there in a way that looks decent, for instance. (And fuck those guys anyway)

 

Most of them will probably be kicked off until future updates, regardless. My immediate focus in on finishing up and fixing the various things that're already done so I can get this stuff actually public. 

 

Some fixes are easy enough. I wasn't entirely happy with the rope strapping on the Nordic banner sets, so I just replaced it with the straps from the Draugr sets.

 

 

Some have proven elusive; I've had a hell of a time finding a shade for a blue version of the leather texture that doesn't come out either too dark or too light in-game. This is probably going to be the 'ah, the hell with it' final product.

 

 

Others are minor things that bug me when I see them but that I haven't gotten around to fixing yet, like how the upper edging on the Merchant bottoms doesn't quite meet up with the field texture.

 

 

Then there's stuff that needs a major re-do like the Miner set. The top came out fine, but I'm just not at all happy with the bottoms. 

 

 

Also the Nirnroot set. I was initially going to scrap this entirely because it looked kinda crummy in Outfit Studio, but I slapped into the game for shits and giggles and... it actually didn't look that bad.

 

 

But since it was almost abandoned there's a lot of things that need fixed up or re-worked about it, to the point where I might as well just re-do the thing entirely. 

 

And one that I did re-do entirely was the Snowy Sabercat set. A version of this was one of my earlier experiments, and showed me that most of the animal textures weren't immediately usable due to the great, gaping holes the alpha patterns put into them. But now that I know how to get rid of those I tried doing it again... and almost abandoned it again because it also didn't look that great in Outfit Studio. I think the in-game lighting is just much more forgiving.

 

 

Although there are points where that's not true, specifically regarding the normal maps. OS almost always seems to pull them out as at least semi-matte; you have to look in-game to find out that the normals for this set based on the sail texture make it oddly glossy. That's something I'm gonna have to play around with.

 

 

But yeah. Mostly just fixes and clean-up, at this point. And maybe seeing if I can get an always-strip keyword built into it so I don't have to add the bottoms to Sexlab's strip list all the damn time. 

 

Then maybe I can get back to that whole robot body project again. Although the way Paradise Halls is now integrating the good ol' Dwarven Devious set is also giving me a few ideas...