New at this–When I import a commercial object (opens perfectly in 3ds Max including the color, etc), when I drag drop the same in to Unity, it loses the colors, etc. (wrapped BMP). I tried also exporting it as a .fbx, and no difference.
How do I get the completed model to import correctly including colors, etc? Do I have to uvwrap it, and if so, do I have to attach that uv map with the object, or is it inherently part of the object? I prefer to work from 3ds Max as I know most about that program.
Select the textures and mark the Format as Truecolor instead of Compressed. In the inspector and you can also play around with the Filter Mode. That should clean them up.
As to your second question, yes, all models that require textures have to be UVd. The UVs are then a part of the model, but you have to create your textures/UVs so that they line up. There should be a ton of youtube videos that explain this in great detail, as a start.
Its funny how that happens with 3ds max models , I had the same problem so looked for this thread. Instead I planned to develop my models in autodesk maya.