Also whilst making an ambient occlusion image (simply an AO node plugged into the colour on a lambert) any modifications to the actual AO node itself take forever (30+ seconds) to update, following this its no problem whatsoever, is this normal behaviour for maya 2008? Just a minor issue, not causing me any huge issues but curious as to why this happens.
Also I found out by accident that turning off the "double sided" attribute in the image planes render stats means you can see through the back and observe the model more easily - my tip for the day

Cheers Jay for a great tute.