Animating lasers is also very simple. Make a cylinder, make it very thin, and put it just inside your laser gun tip. Make a target sphere (or whatever) and set it to Hidden, then have the laser-cylinder track the hidden sphere on it's long (Y-) axis. Then you simply keyframe the laser-cylinder moving towards your target... Tranpsarnecy transitioning? It's easy inside the Material's Lab. On Blend Transparency mode, 100% Transparent is exactly what it says it is... Warping ships in or out? You'll have a rough time doing the wiggly effects within Bryce, but If you just need some wobbly-transparency, I can send you some screenshots about how to do this with the Advanced Motion Editor. Feel free to ask whatever you want!