The picture shows a Red Oak, rendered with custom settings in Vue 9 Studio, meant to be a scene that takes place under a tree. If you look close you can see a 'cupping' pattern in the tree branches, and the leaves look very flat. 

Sorry, very limited budget so replacing the tree with a paid model is out of the question.

Thanks in advance!

Vue trees are best for mid to far range, not up close and personal unless you intend to do postwork to take away the obvious patterns.

You can pick up trees in object format for free sometimes, so watch for them in all your favorite free stuff areas.

It all depends on the tree you have. The HD trees are more suitable for foreground like this. But the thing is, with most trees, is that the last branching level and the leaves attached to it are part of the same alpha plane, so you can't break up the regularity, since it's just a 2D plane. You can play with leaf flexibility and curl in the plant editor, sometimes it gives decent results. You could also add/create a displacement map, this would give more depth to the leaves.

Does Vue offer HD Trees?

Quote - It all depends on the tree you have. The HD trees are more suitable for foreground like this. But the thing is, with most trees, is that the last branching level and the leaves attached to it are part of the same alpha plane, so you can't break up the regularity, since it's just a 2D plane. You can play with leaf flexibility and curl in the plant editor, sometimes it gives decent results. You could also add/create a displacement map, this would give more depth to the leaves.

What is your Vue version? The HD lime tree and HD larch are part of yoir default Artist line version. There a few more with Inf and xStream

I recommend XFrog and the likes (Onyx) for closeups. Yes, it's been said many times, well, here it is again :)

130 free high quality XFrog plants in different formats:

http://www.xfrog.com/2011/01/130-free-xfrogplants-now-available

This is also old news to some, of course :)

You know what? I had completely forgotten about them! So I went back and indeed, they have a lot more free ones than I remember. Thanks for the link. gotta book mark that one!

Quote - I recommend XFrog and the likes (Onyx) for closeups. Yes, it's been said many times, well, here it is again :)

130 free high quality XFrog plants in different formats:

http://www.xfrog.com/2011/01/130-free-xfrogplants-now-available

This is also old news to some, of course :)

I did some fiddling with the textures as you suggested, but what I think is happening is that the textures for the Red Oak actually uses a single image with 3 or 4 individual leaves (and stems) for one geometric plane used by the tree model, and that image lays flat on that plane, which is why it seems to give it its 'whoosh' look. I tried another tree (maple), with only one leaf in its texture map, and got much better results.

Learn something new every day.

Quote - It all depends on the tree you have. The HD trees are more suitable for foreground like this. But the thing is, with most trees, is that the last branching level and the leaves attached to it are part of the same alpha plane, so you can't break up the regularity, since it's just a 2D plane. You can play with leaf flexibility and curl in the plant editor, sometimes it gives decent results. You could also add/create a displacement map, this would give more depth to the leaves.