Here's the katana i made for my week long trial exam:
final result.
non-textured version.
non_textured version with ambient occlusion map.
non_textured version with wireframe, total polycount is roughly 3,6k.
And here's the textures for it, one of the sword and sheath, and one for the stand, i kept them simple with a single ground color with a ambient occlusion map on top with an extra highlight for the blade's edge, then a fiber filter on the hilt and a wood pattern on the stand.
Programs used this time: 3Ds max 2015 for modeling, photoshop CS6 for texturing, xnormal baking an AO map and headus uv layout for unwrapping.