I made a plane with a UV Texture over it. I want the texture to start out with 0 percent transparency then fade in to 100 percent, but I have no idea how. I understand the keyframes but I dont understand how to get it invisible. I added in a material and played with the Transparency field, but nothing at all happend.
Please help!
well first to animate the alpha channel you must have your cursor over alpha slider and press (i) key you will see in your IPO or graph editor the alpha been keyed just move on the timeline or graph editor the frame you want the object disappear move the alpha slider to 0 and press (i) key in the graph editor
But where do u find the Alpha Channel? If its under Materials called “Transparency” then it doesnt work nether does Raytrace 
oh and im using blender 2.45 by the way
i am sorry alpha and transperency are 2 different things i am not sure hot to animate transperency values
They are? I never knew that how?
If it works the same as 4.9 ( I bet it will ) Hit ray trace and then transparency will come with setting the fresnel slider and the IOR slider about 20 %
ray trans kinda gives it a shadow or a bubble look where as z trans will make it complete trans
when you figure that out learn to put in a little animated texture mid way for a cool effect.
Hope this helps.
Oh, z trans runs by the alpha slider
it seems to be difficult to finish it.