Fade in/Fade out

Hi,
I'm a complete noob to Irrlicht. I've got a large project currently using b3d sdk and blitzmax and I would like to transfer it to irrlicht as in my testing it will improve the speed by upto a third in my program. My problem is this: I use heavily entityalpha in my code and there doesn't appear to be a similar command in the b3d command wrapper. I know how to use normal irrlitcht functions in with the b3d wrapper functions but I've had a look and I can't seem to see a way to get this function.  All I can find is people talking about using shaders but I'm a noob so have no idea how to go about that. Also the objects I will be applying this entityalpha on are simple cubes created via createcube.

Thanks for any help