After trying out a few tutorials to get a basic feel for maya, I decided it is time to make my own model. I am trying to make a simple 'friendly' character model using nurbs. So far I have drawn out the curves and made square patches, then I have manipulated the CVs of the curves until I got to what you see below. Here are my problems:

1)

I have no idea what the best way of shaping the eyelids is. After adding a nurbs sphere for the eye, I have found that simply moving the CVs of the curves doesnt give me enough freedom to shape the eyelids around the eyeball as I want. A rather tedious way that was working reasonably (until maya crashed after nearly an hour!! ) was shaping the CVs of the surface patches and completely ignoring the curves.

What is the simplest method of doing this? Bear in mind that I intend to fully animate this character once it is finished - including facial expressions.

2)

No matter how long I spend aligning the CVs of the curves, I still see gastly join lines in between each patch face. Attaching several patches together helps a little bit, but then that opens a whole other range of problems where the new patch doesn't align with the ones on either side of it.

It would be great if someone could either let me know, or point me to a tutorial that explains how to smoothly align my nurbs faces.

Thanks

-Rob