if its for stills use opacity maps,
if itsan animation use RPC

thats not animation.
any plugin or download site for tree maps ?
.tnx

image cels
www.imagecels.com

DOSCH
www.doschdesign.com/

3dcafe.com

They have great trees. but watch out!
They will clog your system up for days because of all of the polylines.

Here's a trick tho. Render your scene, then hide everything but the landscape. Import your trees and then render it separately. After that Photoshop it.

Free Trees - http://www.howardmodels.com/0-tree/DecidiousTreesFull-112103/index.htm

You'll just have to create your own alpha masks.

If there are a lot of them your going to need something with a low poly count in order to keep you rendering time in check.

Also:
http://www.marlinstudios.com

Xfrog public plants - http://www.inf.tu-dresden.de/ST2/cg/downloads/publicplants/

3DTotal Textures Vol 10 - http://www.3dtotal.com/services/cds_new/v10.asp

tnx all.. so helpful.
i also found these freethings
palms :http://www.howardmodels.com/0-tree/Palms-112103/

flower trees : http://www.howardmodels.com/0-tree/FloweringDecidiousTreesPartials-112103/

any suggestion for making a batch in photoshop to make alpha maps out of these ?

forest pack, quick and a little dirty...

http://www.itoosoft.com/english/menu.php?id=news

tree storm for max works wonders... spline based arrays of trees....

Has anyone here used Vue5?
http://www.e-onsoftware.com/Products/vue5infinite/

johnprolly, how does that work?