How Can You Create Complex Seashell Surfaces in Maple?

[imsoconfused]

I've been doing some experimentation with plotting parametrized surfaces in maple, and I would like to get some ideas for more things I could do. I'm not very clever at figuring out new parametrizations, but I'd like to do some things with seashells. The plots I'm coming up with are very simple, like little moonshells or olive shells. I'd like to do some more complicated ones, like lyria and those spiky shells (that I don't know the names of!). I'd welcome any and all suggestions, this is quite fun!

 

[BWElbert]

i use maple a lot too, what parametric equations are you using? It's winter break and I wouldn't mind a fun thing to work on this month.

 

[PhysicalAnomaly]

Try combining sin, cos, exp, pi and i functions.

 

[BWElbert]

ok, been playing with it some...what equations have you used to yield what results (screens/eq's)? I'm thinking that if we analyze plot outputs under certain observed conditions, we can work backwards from a desired result to an equation - based on the ones we already have.

 

[imsoconfused]

here is the one wikipedia gives, I have changed it around some (essentially just changed the constants) to obtain different looking shells: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seashell_surface
be sure you set it 1:1, otherwise it looks too fat.