Here’s a very handy 10-minute tutorial from Zeracheil on the differences and characteristics of each of the maps that give life to PBR materials.

The video explains the basics behind the functionality for all the textures used in the PBR workflow: color, metal, roughness, normal, height, and ambient occlusion.

If you’d like to know more about PBR (Physically Based Rendering) materials and how they work in V-Ray take a look at this article from the guys at Chaosgroup.