I will list here the steps I went through to get to the final look of Adonia trophy a project that was done for Griffin Art House, here are some wiki info about Adonia
Adonia model
I started by a rough model that was build using 3ds max.
Which was then exported to Mudbox to do some sculpting.
Back to 3ds max this was the mental ray Arch&Design material I used. The final look relied heavily on reflection and bumb maps because I didnt use any sort of lighting.
The hdr image that I used.
The Final result.
It was rendered using Mental ray with a bit of depth feild, working with HDR images was a bit tricky so you need to try different angles until you get the result you are after.
Me and Ms Adonia.