Car Tutorial Part 11 - Headlights

Ed Ferguson, CascadiaDesignStudio.com



In top view, draw one headlight curve and mirror it to the opposite side.



In side view, Extrude (with Cap Ends checked) both curves downward.

Next, draw a cutting curve to define the bottom of the headlight buckets, and use it to Boolean > Difference the bottom off the green extrusions. Delete the two unwanted bottom pieces of the extrusion that resulted from the Boolean > Difference. Verify your car body and green extrusions are solids (not joined surfaces). If not solids, go back (Undo) and determine the cause.





Select both of the green extrusions plus the car body, and perform Boolean > Merge.

The Merge will produce six objects: 1) Two headlight cover solids in the same Style as the body 2) Two headlight buckets (green) 3) Two upper parts of the extrusion (green).

Delete the two unwanted upper green extruded pieces. This leaves two green headlight buckets below the fenders.

Select the two headlight cover solids and assign a unique Style (blue). Now hide the blue headlight covers.



Select the walls of the green headlight buckets and Delete.



Select the edges around the car body opening and the bottom edge of the bucket.



Blend with Bulge = 0.7. The Blend produces the desired rounding of the top edges which are impossible to get via Fillet in this particular complex geometry due to the tight radius curves.



Because of the prior operations, our car is no longer a Solid. So select all the objects that make up the car body so far and Join. Verify the result is a solid.

We now have solid headlight covers (blue) setting in headlight buckets (green) with rounded edges created from the Blend.

Hide all Styles except the two blue headlight cover solids. Select the bottom surface of each solid and perform Offset > Inset with a thickness of 0.25” , Inward direction, and a height of 0.85”. This will be our clear plastic headlight cover. If we didn’t inset the covers we would have a clearance problem later with the lighting assemblies to be placed inside the buckets.

After the Inset operation, select the top faces of the headlight solid and perform a Fillet at 0.1”.



Here is the final result of the headlight cover (blue solid), green headlight bucket and car body, all with nice rounded edges. We’ll decide later in the render program whether to make the green headlight bucket chrome, black, or assign it the body paint color.