So I've figured out Cycles shader system enough to where I'm actually texturing a Dawn figure for Cycles rendering. But it's a lot of work. I've already lost it one time and had to start over. Is there some way to create a Cycles material collection preset like Poser uses, where i can just save all the texture images for any particular figure and just add them with one or two clicks?

Not sure this will help but if remember right it this give away and tutorial is a predefined preset that you can modify save and reuse with different projects or use as a starting base for a Cycles texture preset http://www.cgmasters.net/free-tutorials/blender-giveaway-cycles-shader-prime-elements/ and maybe the tutorial can help you with creating your own preset there is a second tutorial that is sort of a follow up to the one in the link. 

Hope this helps 

That's some of the stuff I've been looking for.  Thanks.

Glad it helps 

Not sure this will help, but here's what I do: I have a V4 (and Dawn, and Antonia) figure all set up with shaders for skin, mouth, eye-colour and transparency, and eyelashes (for both PNG and JPG application - different shaders) in a base folder for them. For each figure, I have the image files in a central folder called AllSkin and the following grouped shaders (the example below is for V4):

-- Shader.Body (this is what all skin will connect to)
-- Skin.Face
-- Skin.Limbs
-- Skin.Torso
-- Skin.Mouth
-- Eyes.Clr
-- Eyes.Surface (the transparent bit)
-- Eyes.Lashes

on a central figure (I call her Katie-CyclesMats.blend) specifically there for that purpose. When I import a scene and a figure (usually I import the posed figure separately), I'll Append the entire node tree for the appropriate figure from that .blend file ... you can multi-select all of the node sets at one go.

Then, I'll set up, say, the nostril for the scene figure, then use the Copy Settings widget to copy to clipboard, then paste from clipboard for each associated material. It's still tedious to do, but it's heaps faster than doing them all by hand.

Happy to share the nodesets, btw...

It's possible to link and/or append mats from various .blend files. But at this moment there's still no way to browse it. (In the visual sense. So you're either relying on memory or guessing by the name.) Supposedly there is an add-on being worked upon to do that kind of thing and allow you to have a proper library, but I don't recall the exact name. (Still very early in development last I heard.)