Pick up a pencil and start drawing. It's not hard, but it does take lots of practice.

Thank you for posting these great drawings.

Great drawings.

Learn to draw. Charcoal is cheap.

This is art and there is no rendering engine or easy PS trick that will give you this quality without understanding what makes this image great. Whatever your tools, whether charcoal or pixels, you need to understand and have mastery over things such as composition, lighting, color and on and on.

BUT, if you need this in the next hour, try Topaz Impression plugin for Photoshop. Or VRAY or any other rendering engine that will give you an ambient occlusion pass and combine that with what Black_Orchid said.
 

3dsMax- Graphite rendering (quicksilver engine) then photoshop

maxwell, mess with the sun parameters, think of texture as "bump maps", always render in parallel (no camera distortion) and the layer like crazy in photoshop.

definitely possible to get really close.

yes. the art will happen in the layers in photoshop. it will be just as much craft as by hand to get it there.

yup.

luddites  love to romanticize drawn renderings; it's the only way it doesn't come across indulgent bullshit.

Ferriss's drawings are indulgent bullshit? Maybe he and his clients should have just waited 50 years for the development of rendering engines. Ridiculous.

Maybe someday renderings will reach the level of artistry of a good delineator, but it hasn't happened yet. 

Here's a link to the Columbia Ferriss archive.

+++ anonitect

check out KRobs competition, digital delineators have already achieved equivalent status of hand delineators. talent is talent.......Hugh Ferris wasn't just a good delineator, he had a great imagination with slightly esoteric views of the future city. what really made him famous was his NYC 1916 Zoning Ordinance studies.

spending 2 hours drawing brick when you could automate the process and do it in an hour is indulgence.

and anon, don't be a fucking idiot. Context matters. 1916 is not 2016.

Time is Money! Right, Null? 

The folks who posted at the top of the thread are right, if you want a hand drawing, you have to draw by hand.

Your luddite post oozed sneering condescension - "the silly reactionaries who appreciate the qualities of hand drawing must be self indulgent fools, not serious men of purpose and industry such as myself." Get bent, jackass.

I'll meet you halfway.  Mass model it (no textures),  do a rendering creating your outlines and shadow.  Then draw over the rendering for the effects you want.  

What makes the difference in a lot of his work is knowing what to draw/render.  Any jerk with an expensive camera can take random pictures that look "OK".   A real photographer knows what to photograph and how to photograph it.  A rendering or drawing is the same.  You need to nail the view and the content. 

Why do so many filters in PS mimic hand drawing/ painting techniques?

Agree with Olaf, takes real skill either way.

Thanks guys,

This type of rending is super important for my studio as I am dealing with masses, contrast lighting and shadows.

I have realized that Ferriess had an amazing skill for drawing and a great knowledge for lighting. 

I'll try to do it in Photoshop using various textures and filters. and I may share it too and hear your cynicism and irony. which i love so much myself.

Thank you again!

Always yours,

Chuck