Need a script to render branching splines

Hello, I know a bit of MAXScript myself, but am dealing with severe time constraints, so I was hoping someone might be able to help.

I have been very frustrated dealing with branching spline shapes. When they are rendered, the point of intersection is rendered as overlapping cylinders, rather than a single object branching apart. I need something that can take splines sharing a common "knot", and create an effect similar to that of "rendering/enable in viewport" but with the point of intersection as either a "V" or "T" for 3 spline segments coming together (preferably with the ability to select which one for each branch), or a "+" for 4 segments coming togehter.

Other helpful features would be 1) the ability to control the number of sides, as with enabled rendered splines, 2) The ability to control the width of each spline separately, and 3) The ability to control the size of each of the intersections.

I think there are similar features in some of the tree and/or ivy generating scripts out there, I just want one that will apply it to a manually created set of splines, rather than one that is generated by the script. If someone would like to take a crack at this I would appreciate it. If my appreciation is not enough, I would be willing to meet a reasonable bid (i.e. one within my budget.)