In a situation like this, I prefer to test render with a ball over a box, with clean white shaders, Diffuse_Value = .8. Sometimes I'll use two in different positions to let one throw a shadow on the other. Hide your figures to save time.

This gives me a good sense of how my lights are doing. The crevice between the ball and box shows me how AO is working. I'll render like this one light at a time, so I know what's doing what.

Sometimes I save the current lights to my library, open a blank scene, load a couple test props, and render with the lights. This let's me check that the lights are not blocked in the actual scene.

I have a bunch of these little test props, pre-assembled with a single material zone for easy changes. I made them by saving two or more primitives as an OBJ and load it back and save in my library. Very handy.

This is POND at 5% and INF at 75%. Shadows set like yours. Pro GC at 2.2.

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)