While all the current replies are good, I would also suggest a slightly different approach. Start by deforming your mesh into some poses, and you’ll see right away where it starts to break! For example the Warrior 2 pose from yoga. Then you can refine your loops to help your model retain shapes. Experience is often the…
I meant that AO is usually done as a separate texture or texture channel. Because you shouldn't see any AO on pixels illuminated by direct sun light for example , only in shades . So it's not included into base color texture usually. Cycles , same as any ray tracer in general doesn't need AO because same effect occurs by…