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

1. Select the stroke you want to apply the animation to.
2. In the Attribute Editor, expand Shading, then Texturing.
3. Turn on Map Color.
4. To map the alpha, turn on Map Opacity.
5. Beside Texture Type, select File.
6. In the Image Name box, select the image of the first frame in the animation (for example fishswim.iff.1).
7. Turn on Use Frame Extension.
8. In the Frame Extension box, type the number of the first frame in the animation you are applying as a texture.
9. 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).
10. Right-click in the Frame extension box and select Set Key.
11. 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).
12. Render the animation. See Create a composite of Paint Effects strokes and your scene.