Is it possible to have a particle (dupli’d mesh) to fade out (alpha) at the end of it’s path? I tried adding an IPO for the alpha channel of the mesh, but it changed every iteration of the particle, not just the ones at the end of the particle path.
I have some “bubbles” that follow along a curve guide, and I want the end group to fade out, not just disappear.
Also, is it possible to modify the size of the particle along the path?
These would be nice features to have if not possible. 
add an alpha IPO curve to the particle generatin mesh on the material menu
the same is true for size, change the size of the particle on the material window with an IPO
nope, doesn’t work. Just tried it. Thanks for the idea though. It does the same as adding ipo’s to the original bubble mesh being dupli’d. Changes the lot of particles, not just the ones at the end of their life.
I’m going to try this:https://blenderartists.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=61084, but I’ve never used it…so lots of trial and error if it will even work!
[edit]
I don’t think I can control alpha with the time ipo…only the emitting paramater of the emitter…hmmm…grrrrr :<
bump**
nobody has any ideas? I’m stumped. 
The same question (I think) was posed 3 or 4 months ago concerning version 2.37 and the answer was “no”, if what you’re refering to is the way that particles suddenly pop onto and off of the screen. If you want all of them to fade at the same distance or point from their origin, then you can easily post process the resulting video with a single, feathered mask. If you want them to fade over their lifetime, then I am not the one to help you. I tried an IPO on the “COL A” (which I only assume is for the alpha chanel) with no results, but then I’m not very adept at Blendering, I’m much better with post procesing video.
Try changing the life of the particles, with trial and error, that may work.
rambobaby - bummer! post pro is out of the question as there are too many other elements that I can’t do a simple mask. Oh well, the boss is happy with it as is. Just me being a perfectionist…or at least trying to be one.
sprinkles - I don’t think that will give me what I want.
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Particle LIFE is Linear, locked to the Emitter Time “IPO”.
Just leave what you have done, and duplicate your emitter x times, one for every particle of original emitter.
i.e. Just say your original emitted 50 particles, now make it emit 1 particle but make 50 copies of the emitter then make the emitters Time IPO cyclic.
You can use kloputils to make duplicates.
We need a new button on the particle physics pane “Make Particles Life Seperate” 
You can easily use masks as long as you plan your work a little bit. Put different elements on different layers and render the layers as seperate animations, then recompose them in your favorite compositing program. Mine is After Effects. Unfortunately, this can become very tricky and or tediuos if there is too much interaction between the layers in Z space. I wanted to do the same thing (sort of) at one point, but like you I scraped the idea because it became a bit of a monster.
If you have After Effects then you may want to try using the Z scale function that usually seems to do nothing. There is a great pod-cast tutorial on using it here:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/aftereffectscow/CC_Z_Scale_NewOpen.m4v
Thanks guys/girls (just in case).
I think I’ll leave it as is - I could have done the compositing thing if:
1 - I had a compositor
2 - I had known at the beginning I would do this (scope creep).
3 - I had more time
Plus I rendered it over night to see what the texture quality, and overall timings would feel like. (couldn’t get realtime fps even in wireframe because of having 17 emitters, 16 curve guides, ipo’s on almost everything, ipo drivers, shape keys on 8 meshes, and a hook on one of the curve guides (that I only enabled at the last minute). I’m running p4 3.0 ht with 2 gb ram and geforce 6600 128 pci-e and win xp. Just wasn’t enough!