Most important thing first- what program did you do that in?
Yeah that will probably do.
I'd prefer radiosity though, just because i'm anal i suppose.
Ambient occlusion is basically to do with how much of the light coming _directly_ from the "sky" the surface of the object "sees"- occlusion is how much is blocked. Radiosity is to do with how much light actually gets to a part of an object, whether it comes directly from the sky, or scatters off another part on the object an number of times etc.
If you want to calculate radiosity, you can have the first iteration be the effect of the sky directly lighting the object (like with the ambient occlusion), then, given how much light must be then scattering off the object, work out the total light incident on the surface and so on. It's quite simple really but i'm doing a rubbish job of explaining it.
If my definition of ambient occlusion is different to yours i apologise. I'm not too hot on the jargon. I just used common sense physics and read a little bit about it on the wikipedia. If i've got the wrong end of the stick do tell me.
