Creating carved text
 

How would you create craved text? E.g. Like the carved text off a tombstone.

How can I make use of the Create Text tool inside Maya for this?

I tried using the Create Text in the menu to create some text.
Then I extruded the curves to make them into polygons.

When I boolean difference with the tombstone, everything disappears!
I've check the normals which were all facing out. Maybe it's too complicated for boolean?

not sure if it'll work, but did you try booleaning just one text at a time? and while soing so, try to make the text thicker and just insert it like 1/4 into the tombstone.

Otherwise, if it doesn't work, try this technique. put the text letters in place. > go to front view where you can see a view facing it front on. THen use the split polygon tool and trace the otuline of the text onto the tombstone > then use split polygon again to add in lines where there should be lines and > extrude. Hope that helps, although it will take longer to do it this way.