creating realistic trees
 

im trying to create some trees for an outdoor scene im making. When I started to make the scene I figured I would use sprites and textures to do th leafs but mentalray doesnt like particles it seems. So I particle instanced some leafs that i made but it takes a very long time to render this way. Anyone have any other ideas on how to go about this?

Try this thingy I've included and if that doesn't work, try another approach instead of particle based trees, to paint effects or such ( and if you want low render times, try converting those paint effect to poly's if you've create it).

for some reason it keeps telling me graphivs card capabilities are insufficient for render. very strange

Is your grapic card good enough to support Maya? And if it is.. try downloading the latest drivers.

I hope they will let me download them. All up to my boss.