I noticed that one of the pics in the Top 20 used something called 'Tree Pro' for some of its trees - I can't track this down - any help much appreciated!

Its real name is Onyx Tree Professional... It's very good at what it does, which is to generate trees, but it's also very expensive, and not in the reach of everybody, since they market it for "professionals" read: overprice the program cause people who make a living at this have no problem dropping $600 on a tree generating program and use it as a tax write off... :) But it's a great product, just very expensive if you're just doing this for a hobby...

Gawd...that's somewhat out of my budget's reach - be easier to buy a real tree and take pics of it..LOL! Thanks for the info, anyway - back to my struggles with the Tree Lab, then...

You might want to take a look at XFrog, particularly the light version at $199. http://www.xfrogdownloads.com/greenWeb2/Templates/start.html

Yes, look into Xfrog as a cheap and more versatile solution. If you cheack out my latest 4 or 5 gallery pictures, you can see the models that can be made that are abstract with this program. Needless to say, the trees this program can generate are excellent too. Way i figure it, you get 2 programs for 1, a abstract procedural modelling and plant modeller.

Attached Link: http://www.zenstar.com/

There's always Tree Druid. It makes nice enough tree models. You can get it for Carrara or stand alone. Stand alone is $99.95

I think the Plant Studio to which you refer is this one: http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/PlantStudio/ Although an evaluation version is available this program is not free. Quite reasonably priced if you need such a thing though.