Maya 2014 Transparency and the Sampler Info Node Tutorial by Stuart Christensen
This tutorial by Stuart Christensen will show you a quick way to gain more control over transparent objects in a scene. By using a Sampler Info Node and a Ramp Node attached to the transparency attribute of a shader you gain many more options of how the object looks in the scene. This is a very simple, basic tutorial to get you started with controlling transparency. Enjoy!