Carving braces and tap tuning a top is the single most enjoyable and rewarding aspect of guitar building IMHO. It is what I look forward to the most and I can spend many hours doing this. And I am still learning too.
It's amazing to me how we can glue down the X-brace and begin to shape and reduce it following some basic engineering concepts that preserve adequate strength, eliminate excess mass, and produce tone that we may also shape as we would wish. It's like playing Michaelangelo and removing the excess to permit the tone within to escape.
It's also a very near immediate gratification thing too with results that we can hear with very little effort once we understand what we are doing and follow a methodology that gets us to where we want to go.
It's very true that you can shape braces as per a plan and thickness a top to a spec and end up with a great sounding guitar. But it's also true that you can optimize the top to be superior in many respects and shape the sound to a specific need of the player.
Much of what I do came from John Mayes DVD "Advanced Voicing" and the rest came from making tops including tops that were never intended to be installed on guitars. I would recommend creating some practice tops, following a conventional design, and learning to hear and "feel" the differences that your actions will produce.
Although I disagree with my pal John A. about the Mayes videos I greatly respect his point of view mostly because he is way older than I am.......
Anyway consider making some practice tops, following a decent plan that will mimic say a Martin design, and just spending time flexing the tops, taping them, removing wood, taping again, etc. It is very rewarding to take a "thud" and turn it into a beautiful, sustaining ring.