Don't forget you can always change the leaves to squares (rectangles), shorten the stem length to 0 and borrow some "traditional" leaf texture images from other models.
The animation step is where Arbaro can have a big use for TG2. By producing a series of XML files of the same model with varying curvatures for some of the branch settings, you can generate a series of models for an animation with moving branches.... Rather than create multiple models, I just create one, set it up in TG2 and then render the animation via commandline, inserting a command for Arbaro to generate a new OBJ model (overwriting the same file each time) prior to rendering the frame in TG. This saves a lot of disk space (100 x 3.5kb xml files vs 100 x 20-80Mb OBJ files) and there's aboslutely nothing else needed in the TGD.
I was going to stick the tree in a field of barley but the render time is long enough as it is. I might adjust the camera angle to look up at the tree with some barley in the foreground. Getting the horizon out of the shot should also save some render time (the last few rows of pixels along the flat horizon took a substantial amount of time to render). It'll probably be next week by the time it's finished.
