This will teach you how to make a Gladius sword with maya, and render it with mental ray. We'll be using primitives to make our sword
please e-mail me at bartonix@gmail.com in the subject state kitchen_probe.hdr and I will send you the map. Also if you have any problems with maya, please sign up for my forum and post in the Help section click Here
Now as to explain the HDRI map. Basically, what an HDRI map does is lights your scene according to THE hdri map you're using. An HDRI map is just a picture taken with a wide-angle fish-eye lense camera. And converted to the .hdr format with a program like HDR shop. What it does is it lights your scene using the light within that photo, so you will get somewhat similar lighting It's ideal for putting 3D objects into a real environment.
Open up maya and create a polygon cube with 3 spans on each side
We will be using this as a reference to make our gladius
Scale your cube to make it look like this
Now go into vertex mode, then go into side view 
Select the verts on the two sides and squash them down.
Resize the thickness of your blade
Now we'll make the tip, go back into prespective 
and select the two rows of verts on the front, move them out, and scale them closer to each other
Now scale them on their Y axis
Go back into side view, and select the two middle spans and scale them closer
Now go into the modelling toolset, and go to edit polygons>bevel, click the options box and apply these settings
Ok looks pretty good, now we'll go on to making the handle. Create a polygon sphere
Now create a polygon cube, doesn't matter how many spans it has. Resize it to be bigger than the sphere and move it so the cube is covering half of the sphere
Now select your sphere first, hold down shift and select the cube, then go to the modelling toolset, polygons>booleans>difference
Now, create a polygon torus with these settings, then move/scale it so it will fit on the edge of the sphere
I scaled mine on the X axis a bit to elongate it so it matches more, smooth it as well.
Select both your torus, and spere and hit CTRL+G to group them, scale it so it matches that of the photo, then move it to the blunt end of the sword blade
Create a polygon cylinder with these settings
Scale it to make it much smaller, then move it to the top of the sphere
Now duplicate your cylinder, CTRL+D and move it to the exact underside of the sphere
Now select both cylinders, hit CTRL+G, then CTRL+D, and get out your rotate manipulator, if your rotate manipulator is at the center of the grid, go to edit>group, click the little cube, and apply these settings
Now roate the cylinders equal distances away, keep hitting CTRL+D once they're in the right position
Now select all your cylinders and smooth them, polygons>smooth
Ok you might have gotten some lag from that, but we havn't much more to add to this, I think the sphere for the hand guard looks not so accurate, so we will add a lattice and fix it, go to the animation toolset, Deform> Create lattice, click the option box and apply these settings
Ok! Rightclick, lattice point, on the new lattice, select the two end lattice point spans and scale them so they get closer, and move them out a bit, I'd go into side view for that
Alright, now rightclick object mode on the lattice, select the lattice and the sphere and go to edit>delete all by type>history, it will get rid of the lattice
Now we'll make the handle, create a polygon cylinder with these settings
Scale it on it's X axis a bit so it's a bit smaller, then go into side view, then vertex mode and make it so it looks like this
Now move it to the back of the sphere, leave a little gap between the sphere and the cylinder, now create another cylinder with the same settings, and scale it so it's almost flat, this will be our spacer for the handle
Now select both cylinders, group them CTRL+G, and Duplicate them CTRL+D, move the new duplicates to the back of the old one, keep doing this until you have 4
Ok the handle tapers slightly, so select all your cylinders, and group them, then go to the animation toolset, deform>create lattice, click the options box and apply these settings
Rightclick, lattice point on the lattice, and select the two end lattice points, and scale them so they're slightly smaller
Rightclick object mode, on the lattice, and select the lattice, and all the cylinders your applied the lattice to, and go to edit>delete all by type>history
The blade also needs to be tapered a little, so go into vertex mode, and select the 3 spans on the front and scale them on their Z axis
Ok now, create a sphere, and apply the lattice to it deform>create lattice and apply these settings
Rightclick, lattice point, select the two ends of the points and scale them out a bit
Rightclick object mode, on the lattice, select the lattice and the sphere and go to edit>delete all by type>history
Now move and scale the sphere to the end of the handle, then if you want select all the cylinders on the other sphere, and duplicate them, this will cause a fiarly good chunk of lag to happen, but that's how I'm going to do it, then move it, and scale it so it fits on the center of the new sphere
Select the sphere, and apply a lattice deform>create lattice with these settings
Right click, lattice point, go into side view, and selectthe second from the front row of points, and move them closer to the first row
Rightclick the lattice, object mode, select the lattice and the sphere, and go to edit>delete all by type>history, then move the sphere into place, and the cylinders if needed
Now create a cylinder on it's X axis, and smooth it, then move it to the end of the pommel, and scale it so it's the same size as the rest
Ok! We're done with modelling the sword! Now we'll go on to rendering/texturing
That is the texture we'll be using
Select the entire sword, and hit CTRL+G, and rotate it so it's at an angle (the tip facing downward) so it would seem like it's resting on the grid, the create a polygon plane, and move the sword atop the plane, check under it to see if it's going too far through
Now select the plane, go to the rendering toolset, lighting/shading>assign new material, select lambert, and give it a tanish color
Now select all the metal parts e.g. the blade, torus around the sphere, the cylinders poking out of the spheres, and the metal spacers between the cylinders
Now go to lighting/shading>assign new material>Dgs_material, apply these settings
Select all the wooden parts, and go to lighting/shading>assign new material>phong, reduce it's reflectivity to .150, in the color attribute, click the checker box, click file, then apply the texture to it
Hit the number 6 on your keyboard to see textures on 3D objects
Create an ambient light with no intensity, make it cast shadows, and make a point light with no intensity, make it cast shadows
Now go to render globals 
select Mental Ray from the drop down menu, you can make it any size you want, I made mine full 1024, go into the mental ray tab, apply these settings
Anti-aliasing quallity
Min sample level 1
Max sample level 3
Final Gather
Check final gather
Final gather rays 500
Image based lighting
Click create
If you don't have an HDRI map, you can download one from here, click download to desktop below the image http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/24226891/ I used Apt-Probe for this
I chose to use Angular mapping for my HDRI, but you can use Sphereical, angular tends to look a bit better
Thanks for taking my tutorial! Hope it was helpful!
