Attached Link: http://www.ausgamedev.com/Weird.jpg

Here I have used the UV map as a texture to show you:

www.ausgamedev.com/Weird.jpg

It doesn't matter which orientation I choose to export the UV map in I get a black band around the corners as if the mesh is all squashed up.

I should point out that the texture looks fine in 2D, it just looks weird when applied to the mesh.

Sorry if this a dumb question, I am a newbie to Carrara and 3D modelling in general but am keen to learn.

which didya use - cylindrical or flat mapping?

I used flat mapping.

I presume you have Carrara5(or Pro).

Did you need to do a UV really?  If you have a good sized texture  image,(Jpeg?) ,you should be able to place it with cylindrical or spherical mapping in the shader room OK.

You could use that very same image (or another of your choice) in the Displacement tag to get excellent "bump" effects.

I really don't ever worry about  doing UVs mapping.

Thanks for your help. I didn't know you could do that. I'll try it out. :)

Try mapping it in UVMapper, saving it as a new object and then importing it into Carrara.  Otherwise you need to convert it to a vector object, assign the material zones and use the internal uv mapper to get a reasonable mapping.  Carrara does a fair job but doesn't give you the fine control you get in UVMapper.  I have had this same problem in Carrara and it usually is a messy UV Mapp where the map wraps around to the other side of a flat UV map.  In other words in stead of breaking the map at the edge it connects it to the other edge across the map.  Seems wrong but it does it especially with cylendrical mapping.  If you take one out of  Carrara (export) and look at it in UVMapper you will see what I mean.  Simply mapping it in UVMapper usually fixes this problem.

Dan

Re-affirming what 1DanK said. Carrara's cylinder map contains an errant row of polygons. It can be repaired by hand in the UV mapping pop-up but it is annoying to do (and to have to do). The picture linked in the first post appears to be showing the usual effect (as in, a one-poly wide section of crunched texture). Oh; bug was reported back in February, but I'm getting suspicious I've been put on the "ignore this user" list. Another report of the same bug might actually get someone to look at it.