Using the ambient occlusion method that I was obsessing on all week I first
rendered a lightless AO pass; then I used MegaPov to render a full-color HDRI
pass with one main light_source. Tons of focal blur samples. 49 hours for both
passes (ouch).

Finally I rendered a composite of the HDRI and AO renders. I was able to easily
tweak the balance of light and shadow during the composite render by varying a
single parameter between 0 and 1. I found this to much more artist-friendly than
re-rendering the whole thing again.

Here are some small sample tests, full-size render follows...

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