pgmeri01 -- Let me see if I can help.  I usually use AO on materials instead of lights, because it's difficult to get a lot of control over the scene with lights.  (AO lights affect EVERYTHING the light touches in the same way.)  You might consider turning AO off on your lights and turning it ON for materials.

In any event, MaxDistance is the biggest distance (in whatever default unit you have selected in Poser's main settings) that a ray of light can travel between two objects and still casts a shadow, where Ray Bias is the smallest distance.  If you are getting dark spots from far-away objects (and you don't want them,) you should lower the maxdistance.  If you are getting dark spots from very close objects (and you don't want them,) you should increase the ray bias.  "Samples" will increase the number of light rays sampled, but usually 3 or 4 is sufficient, unless you have a very HIGH max distance.

I suggest adding AO nodes to your materials instead of using it on lights.  That way, you can adjust every material in your scene individually.  This can be a pain to do wth the material room, because you have to apply the nodes one material at a time.  However, there are some very good and inexpensive products out there that will do this in one or two clicks. 

Check out my tutorial on RuntimeDNA.  It might be useful to you.  The same principles I talk about in the tutorial apply to AO lights, too.

By the way, nice scene!  :)

Good luck!

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