Sculpting in Maya

Okay, I'm still trying to learn Maya well enough to easily do organic-looking shapes. Now, I've been searching all over but I can't seem to find any good tutorials on how to create example models, there seems to be a gap between 'the basics' (moving and rotating stuff) and applying cool lighting effects and things. It's as if the whole area of actually MODELLING things has been overlooked on the tutorial sites I've looked at.

What I'm hoping is that someone more knowledgeable about Maya has some idea of good tutorial web-sites or some tutorials somewhere that model some organic objects in fairly easy to follow steps. The basics I'm fine with, it's just that now I'm trying to model specific things and getting stuck, as creating a NURBS sphere, while seemingly the most obvious place to start, isn't very good as I either can't get enough detail in an area, or I have so much detail that simple, large-area modifications become an obsolute pain. Presumably there is a better way as Maya is meant to be one of the industry leaders!

The only offerings I've found thus-far have been books, and I don't really want to shell out more money when these books cover a ton of things I might never get onto, or which many tutorials seem to cover already.

Me too! Maybe someone would like to coach/mentor me for a fee?

I've had classes on Maya (and 3D Studio) and I'm still trying to figure out that middle step.

Now, I've been working with NURBS for my Scuplie Experiments, so here goes...note, I don't have maya open, I'm working from memory.
Create a NURBS circle (I think it's the only way you can create a circle. If you have the toolbar with the bunch of tabs, "hair," "shapes," "solids" and things like that, one has the circle in it, leave that tab open).

Create a circle. Resize it if you want ([e]? and [r] is rotate?). Hit [w] I think to get the axis for movement, shift and drag the circle perpendicular to it's orrientation (so it'd look like a cylandar). Resize/rotate the new circle. Repeat.

Obviously you're only going to end up with a weird thing that's useless until you give it a surface. On that same toolbar there's a tool that creates NURBS surfaces. I think it looks like a wavy blanket. Shift select your cicles in the order you created them, then click that button. If you're in wireframe view (default) you won't notice much. Hit [5] to show simple surface rendering (one of the number keys, I forget if its 4, 5, or 6).

Run the script provided on the wiki (Window -> General Editors -> Script Editor)

It's still a wierd blob, like a melted candle stick, but it shows you how the tools work.

The circles act like topographical marks, as if you cut the object along different planes and were left with the intersection of that plane and the surface (like how a coffee mug, cut vertically looks something like...

|_|

...handle not included.

This kind of understanding should be enough to make sculpies, as we're dealing with a spherical or cylindrical distortion (effectively they are identical--you can easily make a cylandar with a sphere sculpy and vice veresa).

Now, you don't have to use circles, you can distort the circle's control verticies to make other shapes, though the circle has only four. You'll have to use the spline tool to get more (make sure you close the shape!)

There's a quick and dirty tutorial on one dimentional NURBS surface creation.
Two dimentional is more confusing (create a NURBS sphere or "cube" and figure out how you'd use the tool above to do the same, you would have much trouble).