So what I am making is a Douglas fur tree for a game. Right now I placed each of the branches manually (which to waaaayyyy to long)because I couldn't get the particle system to work right. I know the particle system is the way to go So I am wondering if anyone has a particle system that will recreate something like this?
If you would like the blend file just ask! thanks!
There is an Addon that can help you out:
There are a ton of settings, There are many tutorials on how to use it. Maybe also read the manual: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/addons/add_curve/sapling.html
You can find an excellent tutorial by Kenan Proffitt (who also publishes tutorials here on CG Cookie) here where he explains how to manually create realistic trees He uses "Weight Painting" for placing the smaller branches (see the video beginning at 46:38).
"Weight Painting" allows you only to assign colors (=weights) to vertices and interpolates automatically in between. So it depends on your mesh's density.
But you can also use "Texture Painting" for creating a texture that controls the particle density. It only depends on the number of pixels in a texture and therefore allows you a fine control even on low-poly meshes.
@theluthier explains the "Texture Painting" approach here beginning at 9:40 . Also see my posts under that video on how to set up your texture in Blender 2.90 here, here, here and here.