By using a displace deformer which pushes the polygons in the direction they are facing one can generate a vertex map which can be used as a cavity map
The Tension Tag in Cinema 4D allows you to write information to a vertex map that can define how much compressions or stretching (hence the name “tension”) is happening in a deformed object. Yader provides some suggestions for trying other kinds of deformers for some interesting vertex maps, and notes that this technique will, for obvious reasons, work best with static or non-animated objects.
