ok dont use a nurbs cube, polys will be better. Go to photoshop and in a new document (1024 x 1024 should be fine) write any word in black text on a white background and save it as a tiff.

Now use that in maya as a displacement on a simple texture add a coulpe of lights and hit render. and you will see text mysteriously cut into your cube. (make sure you have lots of polys in the cube though or it will look crap!) you can even go to modify >> convert >> displacement to polys if you want to see it in the viewport.


how hard is that?

Alan