You can apply animations as textures to simple strokes and strokes with tubes. For example, suppose you have an animation of a swimming fish. You could apply the animation as a texture on a simple stroke. The fish would appear to swim along the stroke path.
To animate a texture applied to strokes
- Select the stroke you want to apply the animation to.
- In the Attribute Editor, expand Shading, then Texturing.
- Turn on Map Color.
- To map the alpha, turn on Map Opacity.
- Beside Texture Type, select File.
- In the Image Name box, select the image of the first frame in the animation (for example fishswim.iff.1).
- Turn on Use Frame Extension.
- In the Frame Extension box, type the number of the first frame in the animation you are applying as a texture.
- Go to the first frame in your scene animation and click the Auto keyframe toggle (the key icon at the bottom right corner of the Maya main window).
- Right-click in the Frame extension box and select Set Key.
- Go to the last frame in your animated sequence and change the Frame Extension to the last frame of the animation you are applying as a texture (for example, if the last frame is fishswim.iff.24, enter 24).
- Render the animation. See Create a composite of Paint Effects strokes and your scene.