How to represent a tree shading properly

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I want to create a row of trees around my house, which has many windows on one side, and the position of the trees is very important. I’d like to represent the trees as realistically as possible. I’ve already read some guides and I understand that EnergyPlus doesn’t allow very complex shading geometry.

My question is: what is the best way to represent a tree so that it’s realistic but still acceptable and not too heavy for the program?

I’ve looked through existing questions but haven’t found an answer. I also saw the tree modeling video on YouTube by Helix Energy Partners LLC, but it doesn’t represent a real tree and realistic shading in my case. If someone could attach a picture/screenshot of the best way to do this, it would be very helpful and save me a lot of time, because many of the things I’ve tried either don’t represent reality well enough, or, when they do, I run into problems in the simulation.

I am interested on how do other experienced users model trees, here is the model of a tree similar to the one we can see on Helix video here is mine C:\fakepath\ss1.png and here is the one that is similarily modeled to one in the pdf Aaron sent but is giving me errors C:\fakepath\ss2.png. Can someone drop their thoughts on this, or point me to the correct way!