Alias Studio Rear Lamp Assy.

If anybody ever asks you to build a complete rear lamp assembly. Throw your appointment book out the window, because you have just been lumbered with a really difficult task.

How Do You Start?

Like most things in Automotive modelling, you don’t even have one datum surface to kick-off modelling from, so how do you start?Go into the back view and build a set of curves in the True View, which define the outline of your lamp cluster. There are only 2 views which you need to think about this is the most important. The second view is the left/side view, where the unit wraps around the rear corner of the car.

Projecting onto the body of the vehicle

When you do this you’ll definitely get the profile that you desire from the rear view, but what your lamp is going to look like in the right view is going to depend upon the surface shape of the rear corner of the car. It might be great, but normally it will be pretty horrid, so you may have to make a separate set of curves to project in the right view. Don’t worry if the 2 sets of curves don’t marry up, just modify your left view curves until the c-o-s updates with history and you have both sets of curves meeting as you require. USE CURVE COMBS AT ALL TIMES!!!!

Can I Section c-o-s?

Yes you can just like you do with any other intersecting curves.Which is the hardest part of making a lamp assy?

The lenses are by far the trickiest part.

Getting GO at the edges is really hard and if you don’t have GO then you can’t fillet them. This is very important if you are making a pre-production model, but if it’s going to be milled into a hard model  or modelled in clay, it’s better to put the fillets on at that stage.

Transparent Acrylic Shaders

You can download them from AliasDesign, but you’ll have to mess around with them for hours if you’re new to it, until you get them rendering in the way that you or the designer require.________________________________________________________________