Dynamically setting diffuse value

Greetings,

I have reviewed the visibility and skin modifying resources and they don't do quite what I am looking for.

I would like to have parts of my model, fade to black based on damage level. I.e. I would like to set the difuse light level for that part of the model.

I will be setting the level quite frequently which is why the skin modifiers won't work because of the processing requirements.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.