As the hectic pace of the holiday season slows to a crawl, make space to relax and reflect with the soothing landscapes of Doug Campbell. Made using SpeedTree and the worldbuilding application NDunes, these landscapes are sure to transport you.

Compilation of Doug’s work with NDunes between May and October 2021
Introducing Doug Campbell

With my undeclared minor in art history with no formal art training, I have always painted and sculpted for personal enjoyment. After college I met an established professional artist he became my mentor, and general guide to the world of professional galleries.

My work was mostly landscapes and seascapes with the occasional portrait commission. I was represented by several large galleries on the West Coast and an art agent in Los Angeles who represented my work to other galleries in the United States. I lived and painted in Europe for a couple of years, then returned to the US to marry and raise a family.

Doug Campbell on the Eastern slope
of the Sierra Nevada

Out of necessity, I reluctantly became a part of corporate America. I continue to paint on the side, but switched to digital media, primarily 3D. I have worked with a number of software applications, including Vue, Terragen, 3ds Max, and Houdini, always focused on themes of the natural world.

 
Doug Campbell’s 2nd place winning entry for the 2022 NWDA Challenge: “The Horse Raiders”
What drew you to NDunes? Who do you think could benefit from it most?

I barely knew anything about NDunes until I saw some work by Aron Kamolz in 2021. I was impressed because NDunes is in public beta and free.

My first “oh yeah” moment was when I imported a simple terrain HeightField and added a couple of surface textures, a population of simple shrubs, and then there I was: “flying” through this vast landscape as the frames rapidly rendered. I was hooked.

Like any media, it’s the results that make the difference, and I find that the NDunes renders show the quality of lighting and general feel of what I see in nature. I’ve worked with several real-time 3D applications, but none have allowed the ease of creation that I found with NDunes.

NDunes has a proprietary method of creating proxy objects from imported high-poly assets, as well as converting proxies from imported Volumetric Clouds. This enables the smooth manipulation of objects/clouds and terrains in the viewport, as well as fast frame render times.

The environment’s set-up is fully lit and textured with NDunes’ excellent displacement capabilities. The proxy objects called Prisms maintain fidelity to the original high-poly objects’ texture and lighting characteristics, and are easily manipulated in the viewport. The ease of setup, the fast frame renders, and quality of the output in a program designed to create natural environments makes NDunes an obvious choice for me.

SKy Tests by Doug Campbell

It’s not a game engine which, to me, is a plus: fewer unneeded features means fewer complications. If your goal is to create natural environments, or you’re aiming to create procedural environments with structures and roadways in natural settings, NDunes could be a strong contender. 

Compilation of Doug’s work with NDunes between December 2021 and August 2022
How long have you been using SpeedTree and how does it contribute to your workflow?

I’ve used Speedtree for a number of years, dating back to Studio version 6.0. From the outset, I really enjoyed working with the Speedtree interface.

As a painter I used to mangle and twist some brushes, letting them partially dry to shape them. They were used to create bushes and shrubs on the canvas. So the first SpeedTree objects I made were some basic bushes to create the same effect; not botanically correct, but essentially serving the same purpose.

I’ve collected a fair number of SpeedTree Library models and modified them accordingly. Frankly, I’ve been a bit lazy and used the Randomize button often rather than truly going in to customize the trees, but that’s how good the program is. While I do have other foliage and tree creation software, SpeedTree is always the first app that I go to.

The result of using decals for foliage placement in NDunes

SpeedTree partners well within NDunes. The objects come in easily, cleanly, and render out beautifully. What more can you ask for? I am, however, excited by the photogrammetry possibilities of SpeedTree 9 and have a long list of trees to build this year.

Landscapes are your primary focus: has this always been the case or have you approached other specialties and styles before landing on environments?

I grew up in the shadow of California’s great Sierra Nevada mountain range, along the vast California Delta. It’s always been the natural beauty of the land and sky that held my attention and captured my imagination. I use the term “Western Artist” to identify with a number of artists who focus on nature in its wild state.

“Sierra Nevada Mountains”
by William Keith (1876)
“Pikes Peak through the gateway to the Garden of the Gods”
by Thomas Moran
(Late 19th – Early 20th century)

I lived near several museums with collections of painters who were the first to see the great Western wilderness, in its untouched splendor. Artists like William Keith, Thomas Moran, Thomas Hill, Albert Bierstadt, and more. They’re inspirational, not only from the painted images, but the idea of the “undiscovered land”; mostly uninhabited, vast prairies, soaring mountains, forests, and rivers.

I’ve spent a great deal of time hiking and backpacking in the wilderness areas of the Western United States, always absorbing the grandeur and scale of the land. I appreciate how the West would’ve looked to those artists. 

“Mount Hood”
by Thomas Hill (1880)
“Sierra Nevada Morning”
by Albert Bierstadt (1870)
What’s your process for building an NDunes animation?

I start my NDunes scenes in either Gaea or World Creator with a rough idea of the kind of composition and elevations I’d like for a scene. Usually I don’t spend much time on texturing the terrains; just a simple color map saved out.

The final texture is applied in NDunes. The height and color maps are imported into NDunes via a simple conversion, and the terrain is tiled across a spherical planet-sized base. I primarily use Megascans surface textures with the Terrain tools in NDunes to layer, blend, and displace the topography. That’s when I start messing with points of view and lighting.

Typically, I set up a camera at a chosen spot and give it a path to sort of scout around. I sometimes find multiple spots and create cameras there as well. Water areas are defined (if there are water areas), and at some point, inspiration strikes. You see something that compels the eye, and the possibilities start to coalesce. That’s when I begin creating object populations.

Experiments with the water features of NDunes (September 2022)

Everything is procedural and can be changed on the fly. The NDunes Prism proxy objects are very light but still beautiful in the viewport. It’s just so easy to render a few minutes of animation overnight to quickly set-up new scenes, and create camera motions and flythroughs at decent frame rates. This is a fun program.

Testing two distinct lighting scenarios
for an inlet scene
What advice would you have given yourself when you first started working in 3D?

Get the absolute best hardware you can afford. Do the homework, select one major app, learn it well, then take on additional apps to complement it. Don’t get distracted by the technology.

What would you like to tackle next as an artist?

I’ve always wanted to create moving images of small streams, with their shallow, sunlit areas interspersed with gentle, fast-moving cascades. I think that this is the year that can happen. I still have a strong interest in still images and have a few in mind.

There is always that balance between learning and creating. The software is constantly evolving so finding that balance is an ongoing goal.

Testing the water refraction settings in NDunes