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enter image description hereI'm trying to give cavities a different shader in between adjacent objects "Dirt Map", I tried using Geometry Node, linking the Pointiness to Color Ramp to the Factor in a Mix Shader, as per the image above. The problem is, this works just fine within the mesh itself, but it wont capture cavities between different objects, I tried merging the meshes into one object using Ctrl+J, but that didn't change the result. Logically I tried to use Ambient Occlusion as a Factor for the Mix Shader, but Ambient Occlusion is a Shader, not a value provider node, is there a way to capture the value from AO shader to use it for Factor, or is there a completely different way to achieve this?

Georges D
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    You'll have to bake the AO to an image texture, then use the texture as your mix factor. See http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/13508/599 – gandalf3 Apr 21 '16 at 19:49
  • I was afraid someone's gonna say that :) I have lot's of objects, baking AO would take forever "may be it's just me", I just hope there was a way to get the same value that the AO shader provides, thank you anyways @gandalf3 , appreciate your help. – Georges D Apr 21 '16 at 19:52
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    Unfortunately not.. It's been a feature on the todo list for ages, but no one has gotten around to it yet it seems. – gandalf3 Apr 21 '16 at 20:06
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    Cycles now supports the Ambient Occlusion node. – Smith Smitherman Aug 20 '18 at 18:40
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    Yes, now it does, thank you for bringing that up! – Georges D Aug 21 '18 at 09:01

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enter image description here

In the node editor Shift + A then under input you'll find Ambient Occlusion, the node itself shows in the image above, you can use AO output as a factor to feed to a Mix Shader node or a MixRGB node or... whatever you would use a factor for.

Georges D
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  • Can you expand this a bit. "it's in Input category" does not offer much help to anyone. PS does not matter if blender changed since you asked the question, any answer that is valid now is useful. – David Aug 21 '18 at 11:52
  • You're right @David I hope the answer makes more sense now – Georges D Aug 21 '18 at 12:08
  • Much better. For the record I did not DV it. – David Aug 21 '18 at 12:19