Noticing right now that AO is rendering brown/grey/black. So regardless of the underlining color the AO will display as a desaturated shadow layed onto the model. so the color blends out to a desatured shadow which creates an odd effect.
So for a purple paint, the AO would be a darker purple, red would be a burgundy color. The shadow would likely apply as " Overlay/multiply/soft ligfht" - this way the darkening of the AO would take the color underneath to create a more accurate simulation of AO.
Current implementation appear to overlay a standard grey->black AO. Would there be a way to set a blending mode?.