Sounds like a good set up, I too use an invisible ball prop to hold materials ( I have one that I made in wings with several material regions). I use a default lighting set up of an infinite preview light with diffuse and specular disabled, a raytraced shadows spot in front and back, and a diffuse fill point ( all except the infinite are set to off by default). Starting to get to the point where the envirosphere might make it's way into the preferred state as I end up using mostly IDL with one infinite, though.

The Hierarchy editor is always open as I've found this to be the most expedient way to manipulate things in poser.

ps. like the gradient trans map on the ground plane.