Hehe - it's nice that you've all noticed the one thing that I'm not happy with!

sdch1000: The change that I made between pics 4 and 5 was that I smoothed off the veins.

Incidentally - I had to do this by tweaking the Marble texture (that I'm using for the veins) - does anyone know if there is a way to just blur a channel? It seems like the kind of thing that would be really useful, but I can't find any way of doing it...

As far as the direction of the veins goes... I was trying to make it 100% procedural, but I have since decided that I am going to do an image for the path that the veins will take - that way I'll be able to make it a lot more realistic... I've been thinking specifically about how to do the back of the hand (that'll be fun!)