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How can I animate a texture?

I don't want to animate an object with a texture on it, but instead, animate the texture itself and have the UV move. If the UV moves, the texture will change live. This is what I am going for.

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  • $\begingroup$ @brasshat Maybe you should explain that a bit better? It seems like you tried linking to something and it didn't show up. $\endgroup$
    – TARDIS Maker
    Commented Jun 13, 2015 at 19:51
  • $\begingroup$ You're right, Tardis, I was in a hurry again, but I didn't try linking in the comment. Nomar, first, welcome to the site. Next, in Neil Hirsig's Blender course at <gryllus.net/Blender/3D.html>, the eighth video tutorial in lesson 8 covers the displacement modifier. 1' 13" seconds into the tutorial, Neil advocates, and shows how to, attach a texture to an empty Blender object for use with the displacement modifier. I believe you could also attach the animated texture to an empty object in the same manner. $\endgroup$
    – brasshat
    Commented Jun 14, 2015 at 2:41

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Almost any value in blender can be animated. Most of the values that can't be animated are global to the scene like render resolution that make no sense to animate.

With the cursor over a value press I to add a keyframe or right click RMB RMB and choose Insert Keyframe, even values in the node editor and colours can be animated.

enter image description here

enter image description here

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    $\begingroup$ Animating mapping node for some reason does not produce any updates in the viewport though... $\endgroup$
    – D. Skarn
    Commented May 26, 2018 at 8:46
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One way this can be done, is by animating the offset sliders in the Textures Panel. Simply hover with cursor over X,Y,Z values (see the image below) and press I to insert a keyframe:

enter image description here

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    $\begingroup$ Related answer, that uses Mutant Bob's method: blender.stackexchange.com/questions/40085/… and $\endgroup$
    – Paul Gonet
    Commented Sep 17, 2016 at 14:44
  • $\begingroup$ Just a comment, this is the fastest way to achieve some translation of the texture inside a mesh, the fact is that it wont show on the viewport this translation (using BI) I don´t know how it works now on Eevee. $\endgroup$
    – andrepazleal
    Commented Oct 4, 2018 at 19:47
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You can use the UV Warp modifier to offset UVs:

enter image description here

It takes 2 objects (or also bones) to define the transformation. You can easily:

  • rotate
  • translate
  • scale the UV

and also set the center point of transformation.

It allows you to also input vertex map to limit the influence of modifier.

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  • $\begingroup$ Cool answer. Especially due to the fact that the modifier can be tied to a rig, which would need a lot more work to do, using material nodes afaik. $\endgroup$
    – Charlie
    Commented Mar 18, 2021 at 10:57
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You may use the AnimAll add on to do it. Go to User Preferences (Ctrl+Alt+U) and activate it. enter image description here

Here are some examples how to use it:

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Alternative procedural way is to get time value with attribute nodes and calculate uv location from that. This is more complicated, but useful for example to making reusable animator node groups.

Animate UV Map X Location

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