Muzzle flash: Animating "blend" texture

Support Basics & Interface
1

I’m doing some special effects for a guy who requires some muzzle flashes for his movie. Heres the render on frame 2:
http://img387.imageshack.us/img387/1971/muzzleflash27eq.jpg

Heres the problem. On frame 3 I want the flash to be non existant. I can get the particle system and halo glow to turn off, but not the base mesh:
http://img387.imageshack.us/img387/3218/muzzleflash33pv.jpg

Its already at 0 Alpha. But the texture is making it visible. Heres the texture I’m using:
http://img369.imageshack.us/img369/3894/muzzleflashprob0cd.jpg

Is there anyway to animate the alpha level of “blend” texture in the IPO window?

Thanks in advance

2

try animating the ‘var’ or the ‘dvar’ over on the right.

3

I’m doing some special effects

How do you do special effects in blender?

4

Did you animate the alpha of both colours in the colourband?

As a last resort you can always move the object to an invisble layer (key on frame 2 on a visible layer, key on frame 3 on an invisible layer) or move it behind the camera, but those are of course ugly solutions which shouldn’t be necessary.