I am trying to do my first animation and I want to make objects appear and disappear, in my case letters in a graphic. I would like them to fade in and out. I changed the transparency to zero but was still left with a ghosted object. I then tried changing the material mode from surface to volume. That gave me the transparent look but it didn't animate. Or, at least it didn't behave like I expected with key frames.... my whole animation had the last setting I did.

Also is there a quick way to preview without waiting for the whole thing?

Thanks for any suggestions,

Michael