Hi blindfoldjump, yes you would use the Transform > Deform > Flow command in MoI to do stuff like that.

You'd build the model initially as just a straight cylinder, putting in all your detail there. Then you draw a line running down the axis of the cylinder which will be used as the base curve in Flow and draw another wavy curve to use as the target curve in Flow to make that final result.

There are more details and examples of the Flow command here:
http://moi3d.com/3.0/docs/moi_command_reference8.htm#flow

Or also instead of building initially as a cylinder you can build initially as a flat plane and then use Flow to bend that into a cylinder, then map the cylinder onto a wavy curve, I think that's what PaQ is doing in the above example.

Basically Flow allows you to initially construct stuff as a rigid pattern which is much easier to set up, rather than trying to model all the pieces of the bent shape directly "in place".

- Michael