NickWoz

i haven't been on in a while so i am sorry for the delay in response. to make any spherical shape for a organic model i try to stay away from the sphere. triangle in a model will deform terribly and make texturing a pain. make a cube, subdivided into a 4x4x4 surface (using the make polycube1 input in the channel box) then go to create deformers =>sculpt deformer (if you are using maya 7.x or below it's in animation=>create deformers=> sculpt deformers) and slect the option box....in the options change the "mode" should be the top one to "flip." inside the box will appear the deformer. scale it bigger until you get a sphere. delete the history on the object and then simply move the faces around until you get a shape you are happy with, moving down to the tentacles. what's cool about the 4x 4x 4 method is that it makes extruding out 8 tentacles easy.

thanks for checking out my site. i just started checking it again and found your comment....to answer your question I have been using maya for 5 years now. i like the rhino, you gonna texture it?