How To Create Isometric Vector Rocks in Illustrator

Hi everyone, I'm Simona from Vector Twist and welcome to the second of a three-part series on making isometric rocks, stones and boulders using Adobe Illustrator. These are great to use in your 3D scenes to create things like castles, islands, game assets or even concept art. Before we get started, take a moment to hit the subscribe button and the bell to get updates on the release of new Vector Twist tutorials. And without further ado, let's get started. Now before we start drawing our first shape for our isometric rock formation, I'm just going to show you what colors we're working with. I have a group of gray colors, so basically for my isometric sides, a light, a medium and a dark. And then the other two are going to serve as shadows and highlights. Again, I'm not working with an isometric grid, I'm going to use the 3D tools that Illustrator has. So first we're going to pick our light color. And then again, I'm working with the pencil tool. Just to show you when you double click it, my fidelity is all set to smooth, I have fill new strokes checked and also keep selected. Because often after I create something, I need to transform it right away, so it really speeds things up. After that, just press OK. I'm going just to create a rectangle, a small rectangle. I'm going to draw it just like this and then close it off. After that, we're going to add an effect, under effect, 3D, and then choose extrude and bevel. From the position, this time we're going to choose isometric top. And the extrude depth, since I want this to be really tall, we're going to set a probably 400 points. I'm going to toggle on and off the preview. I think that looks pretty tall. And then I'm going to choose from the surface, instead of plastic shading, I'm going to turn it into no shading. I just want to add my own colors, so I know this is going to be the lightest on the right, medium color, and on the left, a darker color. Then we'll press OK. Now we have to expand the appearance on the object, expand appearance. And as you can see, we only have one side in the front. We need to actually cut this part. So this is really simple. I can just ungroup everything. So go to object, ungroup. You might have to do this twice. Then we're going to select the front part. Then we're going to use the knife tool. And then I'm going to press and hold the Option or Alt key and then drag a straight line down to the middle so I can cut it into half. Now, when we use the selection tool, I can select either the left or the right side. We might have to ungroup it again. And now I can fill it with the colors. So this is going to be a medium gray. And the other side is going to be a dark gray. Now we created the base shape of our rock formation. We'll need this later on. So just create a copy and put it to the side. Now we're going to transform this rock piece and give it some highlights and change the scaling a tiny bit. I'm going to choose the lasso tool and then select all of the anchor points on top here. And then you can either work with the free transform tool. Shortcut for this is E. Or you can go to object, transform and then choose scale. I'm going to use scale for this example so you can see better what's going to happen. Since I want to scale the whole top part that I've just selected, I'm going to uniformly shrink the percentage. So I'm going to use the arrow keys on the keyboard. And as you can see, I'm just shrinking it down. It stays in position, but it's now 54% of the original. Maybe that's a little bit much. Maybe I'm going to bring it back up to 65%. I think that looks pretty good. And then I'll press OK. We now have already a good starting point for our isometric rock. We now just are going to add some other colors to give it highlights and shadow. So let's zoom in. For example, in the top part, we want to add some highlights. So I'm going to choose my highlight color. It's really a light gray. And then with the pencil tool, maybe this time I'm going to change the fidelity and bring it down a little bit. I'm just going to create a shape that falls into the bottom corner here, just like that. Then with the pen tool, I'm going to create a similar highlight going down on the edge. Since I'm working with the smart guides, it's easy for me to actually put the anchor point on the path of my top shape. So I'm just going to create a long highlight. If I want to round it out, I have my corner widget active. I'm just going to round it out and then zoom out. Now, this is really an easy way to create an isometric rock. Now we're going to just make some copies and build it up to have a small rock formation. For example, going to create a copy and then shrink all of it down with the free transform tool and then maybe even just pull one corner up. So all you have to do is click on the corner. Then you're going to press the command or control key and then push it upwards. Now, when I let go, you can see I've changed the shape a tiny bit. It's still the same from the original, but looks slightly different. I'm going to group it. The first one I'm going to group as well, and then I can put it into the front. I'm going to have it meet on the bottom and then I'm just going to create a highlight in between those two stones. So let's zoom in. I'm going to choose the pen tool, select the shadow color, a darker gray, and then create a small rectangle going all the way down to the bottom and then to the top. And I might want to pull it out a little bit and round out this corner and then select the stone and put it in front. This way, it gives us the illusion that the stone is not directly connected to the bigger one, that there's a tiny gap and we have a shadow falling into it. Since this was so much fun, let's create another copy of the big one. Use the lasso tool, select all of the top parts here, including the highlight, and then I press and hold the shift key and with the arrow keys, I'm going to shrink it down. This way, I can transform this shape into more like a block like rock. I could have dragged it down with the direct selection tool, but sometimes when you have a lot of anchor points selected, it can get quite frustrating in Illustrator and you'll accidentally delete one of the points. So this is a longer way to achieve it, but a safer way. Then with the lasso tool, I'm going to select all of the bottom anchor points, go back to Object, Transform and choose Scale. And it presets the 65% I've put in the last time for the first stone. And that actually looks pretty good. I might just want to increase it to maybe 70 and then press OK. Now you can see you have already created three isometric rocks out of one base shape. Now, all in all, I think I'm going to shrink it down. And then another trick, if you actually want to keep this, make a copy and then stretch it out lengthwise. You can do this as well with the lasso tool. So we have to select all of the anchor points on the front and then I'm just going to grab one of the anchor points and then stretch it out. Now, this is really an easy way to create multiple rocks with just one shape that you started out with. It is really so much fun because it doesn't take very long to build up your rock formation. So this particular one, we're going to even make smaller, shrink it down and then place it in front of everything. Now, the same way we've created the rocks for the right side, we're going to add another one or maybe even two on the left side. The first shape will be our base again. So I'm creating a copy, scale the bottom part with the lasso tool and then I'm going back to object, transform and scale. 70% looks good. Well, actually, maybe I'll put it up to 80% or 85%. Select all of it and shrink it down with the free transform tool. Let's see how this looks here. I think that's a pretty good size. Since I still have the scale tool activated, I can even shrink it down this way, which will make my top part even flatter. This could really work well to put another stone on top. Now I'm going to push it out to the side. If I want to have a slant, just like on the right side, we can achieve this as well with the lasso tool. I'm going to select all of the anchor points from the back and then with the direct selection tool, pull them up. I might have to tweak a few of the points, but since we're creating rocks, it really kind of like works in our favor just to pull them into different directions. After that, I'm going to put it into place and then create a copy of that smaller one. Use the scale tool to squish it together, push it down, maybe even just grab one of the corners. So just grab it, hold it, press the command or control key and then alter the stone all together. I think this works well. And then we can place it on top. And then all I want to do is actually create a little cutout in the bottom part of the stone on the left. So if I zoom in, basically, I want that the stone looks like it's connected to the big one and then there is sort of a cutout with a hole going through. So we can do this by just cutting a piece out. So we can work either with the scissors tool or with the knife tool and the knife tool will close everything right away. So I think that is a good choice. So I'm just going to press the option or alt key and hold it so I can get cut in straight lines. So basically what I'm trying to do is something like this. And I'm cutting out a triangle and then I just need the direct selection tool and select it and delete it. And then I just need to add an anchor point, select my shape, use the pen tool and then create an anchor point so I can pull it up. Now, all you have to do is create a darker shape here. So I'm going to select my shadow color, go back to the pen tool, and then I'm going to create a shape just like this. Now, when I zoom out, it does look like it's been cut out and actually you could walk through here if you were really small. Then we just need to add a few small tiny touches. Let's say we're going to create a shadow in between. So we're going to choose again the shadow color, pen tool, and then I'm just going to place a small shape like this. Make sure this is in front. And I think that looks pretty good. And then the stone that I have on the side here, I can move all together into the scene as well. If you want to, we can place it all the way on top or we can place it on the right side. This is really up to you. I think I just want to add some shadow in between those two rocks. So let me zoom in. I'll choose the shadow color and then the pen tool. Make sure I send it to the back and then maybe round out the corners a tiny bit. I'm going to zoom out. I think that looks pretty good. Maybe I'm going to remove the highlight just so it looks slightly different. And then we're almost done. I think what we're going to do with this here, we're going to create a really wide flat base. So let's alter this again. The lasso tool, we select all of the bottom corners and then make it really flat. Select all of it and then scale it with the free transform tool. Go back with this lasso tool. Select my bottom anchor points and make it even flatter. And because it's so much fun, let's group it and create a copy and put it to the back and maybe stretch it out a little bit. I'm going to choose the free transform tool, grab one of the corners. And always important, once you grab the corner, press and hold the command or control key and then you could build this up even more. I've actually created a few more copies and altered them a little bit to add to our rock formation. And let me show you what the final looks like. And this is our rock formation built up out of one base rock that we've created in the beginning. And that's it. I hope you really enjoyed this tutorial and I hope you're looking forward to the last part, part number three, where we're going to create an isometric boulder.