Headlights

The first thing you will make is the front fender. For the first part of this tutorial, we have been using the polymodeling method, which is my preferred method but sometimes it's easier to use other methods depending on what you are modeling at the time. For the front fender, it would be easier to use the box modeling technique instead of polymodeling it.

Create a box and line it up with the front of the car where the front fender will be. Add an "Edit Mesh" modifier to the box. In polygon mode, delete the leftmost face shown by the yellow arrow. Deleting this polygon will remove the cap at the halfway point of the fender. The box is shown left.

Now do a few extrudes to form the rest of the shape of the fender. Arrange vertices so that you give it a nice curve. Create a new material for the fender that is a different color from the rest of the car. If you haven't already done it, hide the rest of the car leaving just the fender visible. Add a "Meshsmooth" modifier to the fender with 2 iterations.

Select all the edges shown and chamfer them by 0.4.

Select the polys shown and bevel them by -0.8. Now extrude them a little distance in the negative direction to create a sunk-in area:

 

 

Some vertices need tweaking along the center line because they were moved when you beveled the polys. You also need to delete a poly that was created in the negative extrusion at the center line. By now this should be no problem for you. Select the edges shown below and chamfer them by 1.0. Now mirror the fender along the center line. Make sure you select reference. Now you need to create one of the bolts that connects the fender to the car. The easy way to do this is to create a curve like the one shown below in the top viewport. Next you should add a lathe modifier to the curve. Make sure your settings are the same as the ones shown below. Make sure you also click the "Max" button.

Now position the bolt in the fender. You might have to scale it down if it's too big. Now you can delete the reference copy of the fender and mirror it again, this time choose copy because you are going to weld the two halves together. Delete the "Meshsmooth" modifiers from both halves and then select one of the halves and click the "Attach" button and then select the other half. Weld all the vertices at the halfway point. Also mirror a copy of the bolt that holds the fender to the other side of the car. While you are doing all this mirroring, also mirror a copy of the whole fender to the back of the car. Adjust and tweak it as necessary to make it fit properly at the back. Also mirror copies of the bolts from the front to the back and adjust as necessary.

 

Front Badge

Ok, let's start with the badge that goes in the indentation on the front of the car. Create a box in the front viewport with 5 length segs, 3 width segs, and 2 height segs. Now move around vertices to approximate the shape of the badge as defined by the indentation in the car. Some vertices will need to be welded but at the end of it all you should have something like this. Don't forget to delete the polys at the center line of the car.

Now extrude out the wings of the badge and line them up with the indentation of the car. Play with vertices to get a good shape.

Arrange vertices as shown and then make the cuts shown in red.

Make the cuts shown in red and then extrude the polys shown by the yellow area inwards. When you are extruding inwards, make 2 extrusions. First extrude inwards about halfway and then extrude the rest of the way. The reason you do this is so that you create edges at the halfway point which you will use later. Don't make the inner extrusions too deep. Delete the polygons that are created at the center line. Delete the polys shown in red.

With the red polys selected, extrude outwards up the halfway line that you created with the inward extrusion. Weld the vertices in the green circles. Any time you extrude there will the polys at the center line that you do not want so make sure you always delete them.

Now select the middle poly and extrude it outwards the rest of the way. The badge is shaping up nicely now, what is needed next is some tweaking and detailing. You can tweak it until you get it to the point where you are satisfied with it. It will need a few chamfers here and there and some vertex tweaking. You can put as much or as little detail as you want into it. This is what mine looked like after a whole lot of tweaking.

Proceed to the next page for more on the Headlights!