Blender Cookie - Creating a Topiary

As a follow up to the Topiary Exercise from last week this is a short course explaining my process for creating a detailed rhinoceros topiary like the one below.

My goal was to construct a topiary that A) looked appealing and B) accurately represented the structure of its real world counterpart. Heres how the course breaks down:
Lesson 1: The IvyGen addon is an excellent tool for quickly generating vines and it plays a crucial role in this course. In the first lesson well overview the addon and all of its settings.
Lesson 2: Following the overview well apply what weve learned about IvyGen to generate the underlying branch network of our topiary structure according to a guide mesh.
Lesson 3: Lastly we will use Blenders particle hair tools to grow an outer shell of leaves. Then well apply some simple Cycles materials and lighting for a finished topiary render.

http://cgcookie.com/blender/cgc-courses/creating-topiary/