Object fade in and out for animations

[RoyWingspan]

I'd like to be able to hide and show objects during an animation with a transitional fade away effect. Even a simple hide and show at certain keyframes would be nice. 

[guest84672]

This is definitely on the list for KeyShot 4.

[PhilippeV8]

Yes, .. so it's on the list ..

Can you share any detail on how this will look ?

I've got another 3D software I use for animation at the moment and the way they solve it is giving the material opacity.  This results in the following effect:

Imagine I've got a cube that is flat in the front, but has a holl drilled in it in the back.  If I fade the object with opacity, the edge lines of the drilled hole will become visible ... which gives an ugly result in complex objects.
The way I'd like it is that the back faces have no influence.

[guest84672]

I can't share any details since we haven't developed it yet.

[PhilippeV8]

Ok, I understand.

But now at least I've got you thinking about that, right ?    That there are 2 ways for this.  The pretty and the ugly way.

[RoyWingspan]

Maybe there could be different options to fade out, like one is just decreasing opacity until it is gone, showing only what is seen, another would be like a ghost image or x-ray/wireframe look before fading out. Heck, you could do a linear cut-away sort of thing where slices of the part are removed a bit at a time.  That'd be neat if you wanted to do a cross section view too, you could just decide how much of the part to hide. 

I'd prefer a simple fade out though, like the hide object but with the image gradually being alpha-ed to 100%.