How to animate textures in blender internal and control them

Question

Is it possible to animate textures and then control them with a bone or empty? I want to animate eye textures blinking and looking in different directions etc. by of course drawing the frames. is there a way to control them like shape keys with bones and drivers?

Answer 1

You could put a Driver on the Mapping/Offset of an image texture that copies its value from a controlling empty or bone.

Here is a screenshot that shows such a rig. Notice that the X offset is purple (meaning it is controlled by a driver) and you can see the driver in the curves window configured to copy the minimum value from the Empty object's X Location in World space.