How do you do your AO in blender?

[jordanit0]

I thought I would ask people what they do make there AO maps in blender?

Ive been playing about with my setting in blender trying to get good AO maps and till today I was happy with what I was getting.  Then I watched a tut for baking AO maps with Xnormal, which involved making a hemi sphere bigger than the floor grid and flipping the normals.  They then moved the hemi sphere to the side, underneath and above the mesh the result they got where great better than what ive been able to do in blender.

Link to the video tut http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RfBNMSWp28

So I thought to myself I wonder if this would work in blender and it does.

Here are a couple pics showing the difference

Without the hemi sphere

With the hemi sphere

Much more detail I have found with using the hemi sphere when baking AO maps.

So back to my question what do you all do to get detailed AO maps in blender?  Could be helpful for people like myself and others to know of different ways to bake AO maps.

Also feel free to post what you do even if you dont use blender. :)

Thanks Jordan

 Edited added link to video