Fade in an image in an animation in blender 2.9

Question

New blender user here, I'm trying to fade-in an image in a 3D Animation in blender 2.9. I was able to import an image as a plane.

Looked on youtube and there were some tutorial about transparency or visibility, but I wasn't able to replicate any of those because the interface is different. I also can't find any options where I can set or animate the transparency/visibility.

I also tried this: Fade in action applicable to all objects (in cycles) but I kinda failed in the first steps into nodes stuff.

When I pasted the image in Blender with drag and drop I was able to set the visibility, but the image doesnt appear in the final render.

Here is stated why: Imported image is not showing in render

It's just a reference.

Is there an option I'm missing in the material properties tab or any other tab? Or do I have to do this with Nodes? If so I am ready to learn more about it. Or is there another option to fade-in an image in an animation in blender 2.9?

Or I could try to animate it with blender 2.8 instead of 2.9? (Can I open my 2.9 blender file with blender 2.8?)

Answer 1

(NOTE: You need to have the "Import images to planes" addon enabled to do this).

Step 1 (Import the image):

Step 2 (Open the shader editor):

Step 3 (Add a mix shader in between the principled shader and the material output (Change the factor to 0), then add a transparent shader to the bottom shader input):

Step 4 (Go to the frame you want the image to start fading out (For me it's frame 1)):

Step 5 (Add a keyframe to the factor):

Step 6 (Go to the frame you want the image to fully fade out, and change the factor value to 1):

Step 7 (Add a keyframe to the factor of 1):

And you're done! When you render it, it should look like this:

(Sorry for the image, it was the last thing in my downloads folder).