1. Open up modeler.

2. Start with creating a normal Ball (Create->Ball or Shift+O). Give it a radius of 500mm in X/Y/Z with 16 Sides and 7 Segments (Fig 1.)

Figure 1

3. Select 8 polygons in the same way as Fig 2. (Fig 2.)

Figure 2

4. Use the Bevel tool (Multiply->Bevel or Shift+B) to bevel the polygons slightly, with a "Shift" of 50mm and an "Inset" of 20mm. (Fig 3.)

Figure 3

5. Cut and Paste the selected polygons to a new layer.

6. Now we will start setting up the rails that we will use when extruding these polygons. For more information about creating rails, see my tutorial about making tubes. Make one rail in a new layer for each of the eight polygons, make sure that you START the rail at your polygons and that the rail "shoots out" from the polygon in a straight angle. Make sure to have one rail in each layer only. (Fig 4.)

Figure 4

7. Alright, now its time to start extruding these polygons to our tentacles. Go to the SECOND layer (the layer with your alone polygons) and put it in the foreground, then put the THIRD layer (the first rail) in the background. Select the corresponding polygon. Use the Rail Extrude tool (Multiply->Rail Extrude or Ctrl+R). Use "Uniform Lengths" and 8 segments. Press OK. You should have a rather ugly looking, blocky, tentacle wannabe on your screen. (Fig 5.)

Figure 5

8. Repeat the above procedure with the next 7 polygons and the 7 rails. When you are done you should have something resembling the below figure. (Fig 6.)

Figure 6

9. If the tentacles of your squid looks alright, polynormalwise (Fig 7.) If the normals are facing inwards, press "F" to flip them. Delete the polygons that you first extruded, the lone polygon at the "start" of the tentacle that "caps" the end of it.(Fig 7.) This step is crucial.

Figure 7

10. Cut and Paste these tentacle wannabes into the first layer with the "body" of our squid. Press "M" to merge all points. Here comes the Subpatch Magic!! Press "TAB" to convert all 3 and 4-sided polygons into SubPatches. Wow! Nice, smooth tentacles for our little squid? Sweet! (Fig 8.)

Figure 8

11. Now we have neat little tentacles for our squid. Since we have the original rails we can, if we want, add those little cups all along the tentacles using the Rail Clone.

12. Thats pretty much it, save your object and rails, load it up in LightWave, add some textures and render! Whee! (Fig 9.)

Figure 9

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