I just saw a great new tool that's been added to Lightwave in version 7.5, called the "Magic Bevel" tool, which allows you to grab a polygon face and extrude it into a curved tendril, just by dragging it around in the viewport. You also have sliders to make the tendril taper and twist along the path, and you can adjust the path after you've created it. We don't have any tool like this in Maya, so creating tendrils, tentacles and branching structures with polygons can be really tedious ( I spent months building some neurons by extruding out nurbs surfaces, converting them to poly's, then combining the poly objects and merging vertices). If any of you programming wizards could create a version of this "magic Bevel" tool for Maya, all us lowly modelers would be eternally greatful! There's a demo of the tool in action at this site: http://www.luxology.net/articles/7.5/part2.aspx
Click the second picture from the bottom in the right column, the bird in a profile with tendrils coming out of the back of his head.