Car Tutorial Part 10 - Tail lights

Ed Ferguson, CascadiaDesignStudio.com



Tail light Opening:
Draw a large solid sphere (purple) and use the sizing handles to flatten it down.

Check rear and side views for proper depth into the car body. In side view, slightly rotate the squashed sphere for best appearance.



In back view, draw an oval (the yellow closed curve shown above) and use it as a cutting object to Trim the squashed sphere. This cut-out allows the rear lid of the car body to protrude.

Select the car body and the tail light object (purple) and run Boolean > Merge. We use Merge because it keeps all the pieces we need to move forward. A single Merge operation will create three objects: 1) The taillight opening (cavity), 2) The tail light (solid), and 3) A left-over solid piece of the purple cutting object that we’ll discard.

Immediately after the Merge, select the purple cutting object (by clicking on it at the back, NOT by selecting it in the Style window, because the cavity we want to keep is also the purple Style), and delete it.



After the deletion, you’ll see the tail light solid. Select it and give it a new Style (light red).



Hide the light red tail light. Hey – There’s our purple cavity created from the earlier Merge!

Why do we want the purple cavity even though it will be covered by the light red tail light?
1) We will assign an emissive light material to it in our render program so it back lights the tail light lens.
2) We will create a fillet around the cavity opening for a nice look.



With the light red tail light hidden, select the car body + purple cavity and fillet 0.4”.

At this point our car body remains a solid.

Now, un-hide the light red tail light and give it a Fillet of 0.25”.



Rendered result with a red glass material utilizing a bump map for texture:



Add a turn signal / backup light:

Draw a curve to define the light in rear view. Mirror the curve to place it on the opposite side.



Perform Boolean > Merge and select the tail light and both turn-signal curves. The result is three solids. Assign a unique Style to the turn signals and Fillet 0.1”.



In my render program I applied an emissive material to the taillight opening surface that sits behind the taillight. The actual taillight does not have an emissive material – it has a glass material with a cube texture map. Thus the light shines through the taillight “lens”.