Thanks for your thoughts on this racecgi much appreciated. I have created the vines as nurbs surfaces which I have then converted to polys and attached to my skeleton. I will tweak the poly objects in zrush and try and add a crusty wooden feal to them with twigs and what not hanging from them. My only problem is I am trying to work out how I can go about making it look like these vines are growing. I could cheat and keep trying to get a pfx brush I can attach to the curves on the nurbs objects. Then have my poly hand burst out at the end, the hand will have to be identical to the pfx brush though. I would then have to add another shot so when I cut back to have the hand rise up from the soil bringing up the vines that went down it will all be the polygon version since I think making the pfx go seemlesly into the polys will be to tricky.
Or is there a way I can make my poly object look like it is growing in the same way.

If anyone has any thoughs on how I can get a good final result please let me know.

Many thanks,

Leon