I used to do the full 360 thing (back when I did castles without people), but not anymore - now its what you see is what I make ;) I tend to start off with a ground plane, then place cubes or spheres or cylinders about the scene in the places where major scene components or structures are going to be - just to get a feel for how the POV is going to work out and how objects are going to interact with each other (blocking out my scene). Then I generate the terrains and after that I pretty much set the POV that I will use. Then it just gets down to detailing - start with the biggest objects and work down to the smallest.

Dreams are just nightmares on prozac...
Digital WasteLanD