Sandbox is not as difficult as it looks, however, that doesn't mean it's not tedious as hell sometimes. It looks scary, when, in reality, it is not. I did a youtube miniseries showing my general working practices ... awhile ago. Don't remember how long ago, but you can download the track I did on that stream in the descriptions of the videos.And easy one too.
I'd make an addendum to that; a version of Sandbox that had an easier time supporting high poly objects with reflection maps (or multiple different reflection maps per track) that didn't require you to jump through some really bizarre as hell hoops to load tracks you're working on.
Basically, when working on Zanarkand, I'd have to reload one instance of every object on the track on a blank track file *before* opening the Zanarkand PTF. Thankfully, there aren't that many different objects on the track, but this could get out of hand really quickly on other tracks. This also could admittedly just be an issue with it on my current machine.