In blender 2.45, I’m pretty sure when I had an object selected, I would go into the IPO editor and switch it from object to material mode, and when I went back to the 3D view and pressed I, the keyframe options for material showed up. I have 2.46 now, and it looks like the ONLY keyframe options that show up when you press I in the 3D window are some object ones, they never change.
Am I missing something? Is there any way to alter the change in an object’s alpha value over time without having to manually select the channel and position the curve on the grid myself?
I don’t ever recall being able to key material IPOs from the 3D window … but maybe you are confusing the fact that you can just hit I in the Buttons window in the Material context (F5) ? Like you can do with constraints in the Object context (F7) or in the Editing context (F9) for armatures …