Realistic Detail Tutorials

This thread will hopefully be a big help to those of you who want to step into realistic detailing but don't know how, or where to start. If you have any requests leave them below, and I or another detailer will try and help you out! My forte is obviously nature tracks, but ideally this thread will lend itself to other types of realism, such as art, buildings, etc. I am open to others contributing if they want. They can inbox me and I will edit this post to keep the tutorials neat and concise.

This can be considered version 1, as I don't have time to start off with a million tutorials.

Tutorial #1: Trees

Introduction to Drawing Trees (open) Introduction to Drawing Trees (close)

While drawing any tree, it is very important to have an understanding of how it grows, and what the branches, trunk, and leaves look like. There's no definitive number of species of trees in the world, but estimates range from 10,000 to over 100,000. To make a realistic environment, you need to know what type of tree you want to draw, and this is where reference pictures come in handy! If you are drawing a North American forested environment, finding drawings of cedar, pine, fir, and other trees in those areas will be a lot of help. I see a lot of questions on here coming from people who simply don't know how to draw a tree, period! Pictures are your friend. Know what you want to draw before you draw it.

Pine Tree (open) Pine Tree (close)

Here is a basic outline of a pine tree. Getting the outline is the most important part, as it lays the base down for the rest of your detail. If the outline does not look right, good detail cannot make up for it. Pine trees tend to be fairly slender, and thin to a fine point at the top. Branches are long and extend upwards, especially towards the top.

If you're going for the best realism, inserting branches at various points on the tree will help create a 3D look. All trees have different branches! If you need help, use references!

Next up will be doing the bark:

In general, you cannot go wrong with small, round lines while detailing bark on trees. Pine trees tend to have large bark plates lower on the tree, and small plates on up the trunk. While you work your way up, keep that in mind. If you're new to realistic detail, I recommend using either all black or all scenery (grey) lines for bark. Using both requires some work and messing around with.

Here is an idea of what I did for pine needles on this tree. You don't have to use black, you can use scenery if you like. I tend to use scenery more often for leaves but black worked better with this tree. Pine tree needles come in bunches typically at the end of curved branches.

What it will look like as you continue to add bunches of needles/leaves:

It is important to note I drew needles over the top of the tree trunk in some areas. This can add a lot to a tree if done well.

I noticed while filling in this tree that there were more open spots than I cared for, and since I was going for a fuller tree, I added some new branches, most of which I colored in all black to suggest they were in the background.

End product:

Keep in mind a tree like this takes a long time to draw as well as master. Expect spending at least 2 hours on a single tree if you want it to look like this. Ways to cut down the time include: Smaller size/dimensions, sparser tree with less branches/needles, and using a brush tool rather than drawing line by line.

Tutorial #2: Foreground/Plants

Introduction to Drawing Plants (open) Introduction to Drawing Plants (close)

I tend to use scenery (grey) lines rather than black lines for most plants. It is a softer, prettier look, and assures you can make foreground without it obstructing the ride, which can be useful for smoother tracks. What you use is up to you, however.

General Foreground Plants (open) General Foreground Plants (close)

Starting off with grass stalks and some flower buds which can be easily drawn with small ovals/circles:

You can add on with varying lengths of grasses. Try to keep your plants flowing and fluid, rather than straight and vertical.

You can add flowers, ferns, weeds, anything you want at this point. There is really no excuse for boring foreground detail besides laziness! You don't have to put just grass! Get creative. If you want specific plant tutorials, let me know. I'll add some as time goes on.

Tutorial #3: Rocks

Introduction to Drawing Rocks (open) Introduction to Drawing Rocks (close)

Drawing realistic rocks can be hard. How much black vs grey vs white to use, how to draw the different shapes, weird dimensions, and keep all of your rocks from looking like they came out of a factory: all the exact same shape and size. The recommendation I can give is to draw based on environment: mossy rocks in a jungle, granite rocks in a forest, sandstone in a desert. When it comes right down to it, remember the basics. Ever shaded a sphere? Pick a light source, a dark side, and go from there. Rocks aren't perfect spheres of course, but it's a good example to remember, especially when you're starting out.

Granite Boulders (open) Granite Boulders (close)

Granite rocks are my preferred choice when drawing forest environments. They can be found as small, smooth river rocks or as massive boulders. The type I like to draw are typically greyish and speckled. But there are a lot of ways to draw rocks, and a lot of shapes and colors they can take. There isn't really a "right" way, so keep that in mind.

Using a reference is helpful for me, as I don't want all of my rocks to have the exact same shape and look. Here is my reference, taken in Yosemite:

The outline I drew:

The next thing I'll do is create some marks with the scenery and line tools to plan out how I want the shading to be (can be based on your imagination or a reference). I'll fill these in next.

If you're doing this without a reference, I'd recommend picking a point where the sun/light is coming from, and draw the lighter and darker areas based on that. It's important to keep that consistent with other elements of your track too. (Example: if your light is coming from the right on your rocks, it should be coming from the right on your trees.)

After the dark areas are filled in, I'll take the scenery brush tool and create some markings and speckles on the rock to give it a rough look. This is mostly done just by drawing small lines and filling in larger circles. Drawing in cracks in the rock can be done as well.

Remember, the larger the scale of the rock, the more detail you can put into it. Because the size of your lines is limited, if you're drawing very small rocks this type of rock might not be your best choice. You're only going to be able to make the speckles and dots so small. You don't want to end up with this:

Here is the finished product, after filling everything in:

The light and dark areas on this rock aren't particularly pronounced. The darkest areas are cracks and crevices rather than dark sides. Other examples with a similar style of rocks:

Tutorial #4: Portraits

Introduction to Drawing Portraits (open) Introduction to Drawing Portraits (close)

I understand drawing portraits (or even art with specific subjects) isn't massively popular on free rider. Only a few have actually drawn art tracks with people among the hundreds of incredible artists on this site: armator , Maple , Komo , and myself included. But I'm sure this will be helpful to someone out there who wants to dive into portrait drawing on free rider, and of course concepts on here can be applied to actual drawing as well. If you'd like to check out a portrait I have done in free rider, click below:

Face - Profile (open) Face - Profile (close)

What follows is advice I gave to Komo on a WIP she was working on. Keep in mind I only had her reference and a picture of her track, not the actual code - so everything below is a mock up I did in photoshop rather than on the free rider editor. But this can just as easily be drawn in free rider as well.

This picture she gave me:

My advice: Smooth shadows. Draw where you want to shade, and fill the outlines in cleanly, for now. Make the shadows slightly smaller than you normally would so you can go back in and extend them to draw the lines in the face/fabric. Notice the shadows on your fabric are a lot sketchier than this. This takes more time but looks better. Depends how much you care about it. To keep myself from getting confused, I put B for black areas, W for white areas (erase when you're done), and would put S for scenery areas. Marking and outlining the light and dark areas in a drawing was a tip I got from a wildlife realism artist in the UK - and it's something I have used in almost all of my serious, larger scale drawings. Including free rider! It's simple and easy because here you only have black, grey, and white to work with. With the hair, notice that I put much more black than in your track. I kept the hair highlights white only (to show contrast, you don't really need scenery for this pic imo) and tried to keep most of it towards the edges where the light is actually shining. The middle parts are noticeably darker and more filled in.

Once you fill the outlines in the face in, it'd look something like this. (How much scenery/black you use for this completely depends on how dark your reference is - or your subject for that matter. As long as you don't have a completely white face, keeping it simple and light is okay and making it dark is also okay - my portrait on free rider is much lighter than this.)

Now you can go in and start drawing in the finer details, once you have the basic shading down. Using a combination of black and scenery lines can be helpful for merging all black areas with all scenery areas, like I did with the beard here.


This was all I did for the mock-up, but the concepts here should be useful.

What I plan to add in the near future:
New specific tree and plant types
Clouds
Water
Cliffs

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whoa all this knowledge in 1 post

 

Great work, you should get a couple of other people to help you though, so you get their opinions as well

 

That's what I was hoping for.

 

Can you add mist and water to your list of things to show

 

Waters up there, mist would kind of be secondary but along with it.

 

OMG!! I SOOO need this. Thankyou soo much!

 

the tree was really helpful but the general plant bit I'm just super curious on now haha

 

very nice Forlorn333 I'm drawing a ton of trees and nature stuff in school this year, eventually I'm going to try and draw them in FR

 

That's more for people who struggle with figuring out how to detail ground and whatnot, I see a lot of unoriginal ground detail so it'll be useful for throwing out ideas more so than an in depth tutorial.

Sounds good!

 

Tbh I still need help and I have my own style. Lol

 

Might I add, for foreground dead twigs/branches are scattered throughout a forest so that is definitely something ppl could add. I don't have a finished forest track so I have no example yet.

 

This was really helpful Forlorn333 thankyou! Im sure that this will make my work 10x easier! Thanks! o u recken u could do a tutorial on Cliff sides?

 

Yep, that is something I'll make note of

No problem! Yeah I'll write that one down.

 

hey i might be able to draw a good tree now!!! haha thanks forlorn

 

I need help with rocks SOOO bad

 

Same here

 

I'd love to see one on rocks, I'm the worst at them. Specifically the shaping of a rock.

 

same

 

First draw a lumpy circle that fits the space that you want, Second detail like you normally do, You are done