This semi-symmetrical principle defines the approach to painting the texture. Conifers often grow limbs with a certain pattern. It's a kind of a row effect where there are areas of foliage followed by a visible a gap, then more limbs and foliage, etc. A semi-symmetrical tiling texture works to recreate these patterns, at least when the texture is wrapped on a cone or spike model correctly.

We used Painter's Define Pattern feature to paint the tile texture on a layer, then saved the layer mask and flattened the file to us as a texture.