I'm working on a project for a client creating mock ups of rubber wrist bands with company logos on them. I was wondering if someone here would be able to give me a bit of instruction on how to create it in Carrara. The wording or logo needs to look recessed into the band and be curved around. I've had little success with Photoshop or Illustrator getting the curve right. It seems like a simple project, but I'm new to Carrara and i'm not sure how to go about creating the band shape. I've attached an image of what I'm trying to do. I was hoping to create one that's a bit more realistic than the ones on the top though.

The easy way to do it is to create the band in the spline modeler using a rounded square for the cross section shape and choosing the torus geometry preset. You can then make a Layer shader using a bump map of the name on a rectangular layer.

The shader:

Awesome! Thanks for your help. I think I've almost got it! I'm having some trouble with the shader though. How do I make a rectangular layer (or edit the shader of the rectangular layer). Sorry, I'm still a Carrara noobie. I really appreciate your help :-)

BTW, I'm using Cararra 3 if that makes a difference. That might be why it looks different than my shader box.

At the top of the shader dialog are four buttons. The second one will allow you to draw a rectangle on the image of the band in the preview window. The appropriate layer and dimensions will be created automatically in the shader tree. Choose Multi channel as the shader for the rectangle. BTW sometimes the rectangle on the band will look kind of funky. This seems to be a bug in the display. The rectangle is usually ok. The first button at the top (with the arrow) will allow some editing of the size and placement of the rectangle or you can play with the numbers in the top, height, left and width boxes.

CS3 should be about the same but the "alpha" will be missing from the tree.

It worked! Thanks so much! I like how the wording on your band looks very recessed. For some reason I can't get mine to look recessed enough. Do you think it might be the font i'm using? Or maybe the lighting?

Is the font you're using solid? It looks to be a font that outlines the shapes in the letters. I'd suggest trying it with a solid font -- say Times New Roman or something like that -- and see if that works better. It looks like your font is engraved, but only the outlines.

I just used Arial and blurred it a bit in PS to give a rounded appearance to the depressed letters.

Xenobug, push up 'Bump Amplitude' [at the bottom of the shader tree] a bit, if you haven't tried that.