The new system separates the lighting environment from the individual materials - so if you want to move from a sunset beach to a castle dungeon you just switch the enviromnent and the shading on each material updates automatically.
So for example, below I used a single HDR Environment and generated Lightmaps for different materials from it automatically. This will effectively give you a wide range of metals, mattes and shiny materials to use with lighting from any direction you like - for each Environment you use. And while you can use pre-existing hdr files for Environments you can also paint your own - which will work well in a more stylised workflow.
Ultimately I would like to get materials fully controlled by textures - so on a single mesh you could simply paint full materials eg: "chalk", "chrome", "brass", "gloss paint" next to each other, which may help for detailing.
![Image](http://www.curvy3d.com/images/c4/HDRMatPillar.jpg)