I’m looking to create transparent materials in Unity (billboards, hair, cutout objects) and am having difficulty. Does anyone have any experience
with this? For example, what file format do I use to create the gradient map? Where in the material’s property do I apply it? I’m a first-time user and just a beginning developer, so if you can explain how to do it in as detailed a way as you can, I’d appreciate it. Thanks in advance.
Hey normNuThinkStudios,
Welcome to Unity 
It’s going to be to your advantage to read through some of the docs a bit to get familiar with how Unity handles materials and texture formats. Here’s 2 links to pages in the docs relevant to your questions:
You should also do some searches on the forum when just starting out as many questions have been answered several times over. I don’t mean this to be a RTFM type post, just trying to set you off in the right direction. Our search engine is a little lack luster to say the least so the best route is to use Google’s site specific search… so for this I’d type in “transparency site:forum.unity3d.com”.