Importing models with multitextured materials (diffuse + alpha map)

Unity Engine
1

I have a file Blender model of a tree. It consists of some branches and lots foliage, nothing unusual.

The foliage consists of a single material, which consists of 2 textures, a diffuse and lower resolution alphamap (I want to keep the file structure as is, instead of merging the 2 which I know is easier).

I had enough trouble just importing the exported fbx model and getting any textures to display, I had to switch the foliage shader’s rendering mode from ‘Transparent’ to ‘Opaque’, so now what I have now is a textured model with no alphamap applied.

When I look at the tree in Unity’s inspector, the foliage shader is set to ‘Standard’ and has one texture in Albedo. I’ve read many guides online, some contradictory, but I’ve gathered Unity doesn’t interpret material data from models, and I have to reappropriate them within Unity. I don’t understand why this is, but anyway…

What is the ‘correct’ way of applying alphamaps in Unity, or for that matter any multitextured material at all, or a complex node based blender material? Am I correct in presuming Unity cannot interpret materials/shaders from Blender?
I’ve attached my blender file with the textures included if that helps.

2662393–187734–tree.zip (1.89 MB)

2

The “Standard” Shader does expect you to deliver the transparency information in the alpha channel of the Albedo texture.
If you think that a different behavior is necessary for your project you can download the build in shader and modify them to fit your needs.
https://unity3d.com/get-unity/download/archive
Select “Built in shaders” from the drop down list.

To have the Albedo / diffuse( in the old shaders) and the alpha texture in on texture is the industry standard for may years now, that’s why unity does it.

You are correct, unity is not compatible with any blender shader.