welcome to the forums!
you can hook up a greyscale texture to the object's material's transparency slot in the attribute editor
black means it's opaque and white means it's transparent and grey is in between
that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"
Computer skills I should have:
Objective C, C#, Java, MEL. Python, C++, XML, JavaScript, XSLT, HTML, SQL, CSS, FXScript, Clips, SOAR, ActionScript, OpenGL, DirectX
Maya, XSI, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Motion, Illustrator, Flash, Swift3D