Hi Guys,
thanks for the responses and will look into each of them now. However, did a bit of work last night with Mudbox and Maya.

After exporting the model into Mudbox, deformed the same and saved them as separate files at each deformation stage. Brought them back to Maya and created a blend shape with the base object.

Animated the scene over a period of time with each of the blend shapes kicking in at regular intervals.

Not the best of the work, but looks melting-ish!!!!

Rgds

GP