(*ignore please the Ground, Background, and Lighting; this is Only a test for Material Nodes)

First let me say I am only now exploring the Cycles node and have only watched a few Blender Tutorials. What I have here is an FBX model and the creator supplies the following Maps:

Color Map Roughness Map Metal Map AO Map Normal Map

The Front vehicle is using PhysicalSurce and the Rear vehicle is my first attempt to use Cycles. Rendered in SuperFly, using the stock Ultra (GPU) render setting. Lights are just the P12 supplied SuperFly "Overhead" set with some values turned up. But the Cycles appears 'flat' to me. The metal surfaces have lost their luster and 'surface roughness'? I like how Cycles tamed the shine on the leather, but even it appears 'flat' and without roughness to it. Is there something missing in my node set up? Does this need to be set up 'deeper', with Clamp Nodes and such (which I am still trying to grasp the theroy of their operation)

These are the two Render Nodes as I set them up:

I am not online 24/7 so please don't be offended if I don't check back in for a day

throw out the ambient occlusion maps, there is no place to plug those into the Principled BSDF. Looks like you have it plugged into spec and roughness. If you don't actually have a specular map then that should be set to .5

What ghostship2 said - to expand a bit, using those maps the setup should be very simple.

Physical root

Plug colour map to colour chip Plug roughness map to roughness chip, set chip value to 1 Plug metal map to metallic chip, set value to 1 Plug normal map to normal chip, set value to 1 (Ignore AO map)

Principled BSDF

Plug colour map to colour chip Plug metal map to metallic chip Plug roughness map to roughness chip Plug normal map to Cycles - Vector - NormalMap node, set strength 1 and space at tangent; then plug into normal chip (Ignore AO map)

Set specular to 0.5 (this means 4% base reflectance for non-metals).

That’s it. Gamma on the maps should be 1 for everything apart from the colour maps. Given the same light and render settings the results should be a pretty good match.

AFAIK AO maps are intended for realtime engines that don't calculate occlusion. They could be useful for adding extra dirt effects, but aren't necessary in Superfly.

Thanks ghostship2 and caisson, that seems to have done the trick. I was never sure about the AO maps.