This may seem like a simple question but for the life of me I can't get it to work without scaling the object down to almost nil. Situation....say I have a ship in an animation and it blows up, how do I then get it to disappear after the explosion fades? Using hide object hides it in all frames, deleting it deletes it from all frames.

try changing the material to be completely transparent. put the keyframes very close together it won't look like it's fading

Yeah I thought of that too, it just doesn't seem the ideal solution but if it's the only way I'll have to settle for that or scaling it down. Thanks

You can use the scaling method but you need to scale it to 0 from one keyframe to the next. So add a keyframe at the last frame you want the object to be full sizes. Then go to file/animation setup, the top set of options is the current time, in the frame# option box type in the next frame ..ie: if it's at frame 35 type in 36, this moves the time line to frame 36, then scale the object to 0 and add another keyframe. Now the object should go from full sized to nothing between frame 35 and 36. The frames per second shouldn't matter because your going by frames, but is real imported to set a keyframe at the last frame you want the object to be full sized or else it will start scaling down before it gets to that frame.

Here's one tip about transparency: when your object is 100% transparent move it behind camera. For some reason Bryce's rendering engine still renders it and the render takes a lot longer even when there's nothing. When you move it away render finishes faster.