How do I animate OBJECT ColA?

I have some text that I would like to fade in from Alpha=0 to Alpha=1, but animating the OBJECT IPO for ColA from 0 at frame 640 to 1.0 at frame 1000 does absolutely nothing. I don’t want to animate the MATERIAL alpha because that affects all the other text with the same texture. I want that effect, but only on the object I am animating. Can anybody tell me how to get ColA to really make an OBJECT transparent? Please?

:confused::confused::confused::confused::confused::confused:

ColR, ColG, ColB, and ColA, only seem to affect the Texture face ObColor. Which in turn only affects the OpenGl Shaded view rendering. This may have some use in the Game engine, but appears to have no use for actual rendering. I would suggest you just make a new material based on the existing one (Just select the Object and click Add new on the material list). This way you can animate the alpha of the new material without changing the material for all the other objects.

Man, that really sucks. Is there possibly a way to have 2 objects with the same texture and only one of them uses the MatIpo where the alpha changes? It seems silly that there is no way that 2 (or a million) objects can share the same texture and have different opacities. Maybe I’ll file a feature request.

Not, that I could find, Since the IPO controls the Material alpha, it would affect all objects using the material. The only way around that is to make a copy of the material. Or, an even more complex way would be to render two layers one that contains the object that you want to fade and one that does not, then use the compositor to fade out the object. As often as people want items to disappear it would be nice to have an IPO for object Visibility, that would let you fade in or out.

Unless I am misunderstanding what you are trying to do, can’t you just select the object you want to fade in or out and then make it a single user in the links and pipeline panel of the material. Then you can add an alpha IPO to this without affecting the other objects.

Nope that’s not possible. You cannot make a Material Ipo single user. There is no option to do so. It would be really great if there was because you could have a master material for a number of different objects and then affect each object’s settings for that Material.

Just the fact that I have to go into the Material Ipo to change the Alpha for the object frustrates me. Why is there even a frickin’ channel for ColA on the object if it doesn’t do anything?!