A couple of things on this one..... 1) You need to idenitfy what is causing the black spots. Potential sources are light-based AO, material-base AO (OcclusionMaster) and ray-traced shadows from a light. To confirm that's it's AO that causing the problem, in your render settings, turn ray-tracing ON and shadows OFF, and render. If the black spots go away, it's a ray-traced shadow that's the prob, otherwise it's some form of AO. If it's an AO problem, to track it down, make sure there are NO lights with AO on, and rerender. If the black spots are still there, it's a material-based AO issue (from the OcclusionMaster). In this case, the usually solution is to turn UP the ray bias. 2) [Assuming it's a material-based AO issue] The reason the black spots are there is due to the way the mesh has deformed from the joint bend. I suspect that there are polygons that have folded back on themselves, which is triggering an AO shadow - which can be confirmed by exporting the mesh and loading it into Wings to have a look. There are occasionally joint deformations that are bad enough that AO simply won't work well on them - in which case you need to turn off AO (in the OcclusionMaster panel shown in msg #12) for the material that is on that part of the mesh. From the render you've posted, it could be a hip?

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