I'll be able to cull down the poly count as needed. I tried a default Arbutus(?). It was 650,000 polys :) . That's great for up close; but that much detail isn't needed far away; you don't 'see' it anyhow. I got it down to 90,000 and could probably have gone a bit lower than that and still had a nice looking background tree.
Exported .3ds objects won't open in Max for some reason. Probably a version conflict. .obj objects work fine. The esport is a single mesh w/ single shader, but fortunately Max interprets the exported shader as multi sub-object; so there isn't any problem with editing the leaves, trunk, etc. shaders independently.
This is a great feature. I've been looking for a way to make really good tree meshes for some time now. Just the tree meshes alone are worth what I paid for the app.
Next time I see a 3ds Max user asking where to get good trees, I'll know where to send them .

Friends don't let friends use booleans.