Here's my first decent render using indirect lighting, and I was very pleased with the results of this experiment. It took a while, though, so I probably won't be using IL much until my new (i.e. faster) computer arrives. I think IL shows some promise! I just have to figure out how to tone it down in scenes with more than one light (I tried it once with three lights, and my character ended up oversatuurated with most of the shading blown out) and get rid of the slight tinting that it seems to cause when traversing transparent material (in this case, the hair). 

I used Bagginsbill's Environment Sphere with a panoramic photo from Flickr. The shaders/textures and morph are of my own design. Comments are welcome! 

On the subject of occlusion, I've experienced similar issues.  When I built my Photo Studio using planes as walls, there was almost no shading at the corners where the walls met.  When I switched to thinned-down cubes, the missing occlusion magically appeared!