Why can't we have the nice things? You guys should seriously kickstart this thing, I'd put some money up for it. Previous publisher own it or something? I'm local to Seattle working at King/Z2 (recently acquired)......check out our site for any openings. PM me and I'll make sure your stuff goes to the right people.
Originally I had just made it part of the texture, but our animator requested that it was separate geometry so he could have more control over different parts of the robot - for overlapping action, for jostling bits of the robot on impacts, and in case we wanted to show damage states where parts of the robot were hanging…