IBM typing ball -
I did this as an exercise with Mental Ray. It's an IBM type font ball thing from back in the day.
The founding members of WEEN met in a junior high school typing class back in '84, or so the legend goes.
So I made this with that in mind...
I made the metal portion in zbrush and Maya, using the UV's to place the letters. Then I hit a bunch of buttons in Maya/Mental Ray.
Yes, technically the font should be backwards.
:)