Headlights are an important part of any car model.

In this tutorial I will outline how to make a quick and simple round headlight using 3D Studio Max 7/7.5 and mental Ray - although it should be perfectly possible to use earlier versions. The second part will outline a method for texturing teh light lens with refracting, bump-mapped glass.

1. First I start with creating a sphere, using the standard settings

2. Right click on the sphere in the Modify panel and change Sphere01 to an Editable Poly

3. Select Polygon to edit polygon and select the left hand side of the sphere

4. Select the move tool and while holding down the shift key click once on the move icon - a menu will pop-up : change the default text to "Light Lense"

5. This will create another object (the shape of a half sphere - shown in Green). Now select the same polygons again (shown in red) and delete them - back to the same sphere half green and half white. The white sphere will be the reflector and the green part will be the light lense.

6. Now go to the Edit menu and "Select All". Scroll down the Modify Panel and select "Flip" to flip the direction of the polygons making the inside of the white sphere solid. Rename the white sphere "Light Reflector". Now we basically have a front lense and a rear reflector.

7. Select the Lense (left hand side) and select the non-uniform scale tool - scale the lense until it looks good.

8. Create a small sphere inside the two spheres - this will be our light bulb. Now on to texturing :

As a finishing touch - take a ring of Polys from the outer edge of the Lens, detach them, extrude the edges back and and use those as a chrome ring around the edge of the Lens. See the render in Part 2. Texturing the Headlight