Setting $no_draw on textures using lua

[CGNick]

I am trying to make certain materials to be invisible and I decided to trigger that using lua. Now for some reason I can do something like say:

[lua]HandsTex:SetMaterialTexture("$basetexture", Material("null"):GetMaterialTexture("$basetexture"))[/lua]

and it works but this doesn't:

[lua]HandsTex:SetMaterialInt("$no_draw", 1)[/lua]

I also tried

[lua]HandsTex:SetMaterialString("$no_draw", "1")[/lua]

Any suggestions?