The good news is it's fairly easy IMO. What I do is I take a parallel approach, where one line is emulating a DI approach, and the other is through an amp and cab. I spent an evening going through every.. single.. amplifier.. and I found the results to be very interesting. For rock, on the amp+cab chain use something plexi-ish, cut the lows and add just enough grind that you think it might be too much. Most rock bass tones sound gross solo'd, and then magical inside the mix. For metal, or more aggressive stuff, try something based on the 5150, Peavey or EVH, same thing with bass cut and gain.
Almost every amp can sound good with the right tweaking and IR, but the plexi/5150 gets me up and running with a tone that "just works" based on a simple formula. If you need perfectly clean you won't be happy with this approach at all, you'll have to get freaky with compressors.