Uploaded December 2018 | Updated September 2026, 5 days ago

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I received a comment today asking me how to make this in 2.8.

Tutorial result available on CGT:
cgtrader.com/3d-models/scripts-plugins/animation/for-anime-in-blender-action-backgrounds

There are quite a few issues with 2.8 that makes this sort of thing really really annoyingly difficult to make. I think this is a mix of missing features and the different approach.

For example, the cone's texture needs to be shifted as well as flipped horizontally (that really stunned me, considering the origin of the texture didn't change...). Maybe the origin of the texture is like at the base or edge of the UV unwrapping? I don't know. This is an example of the approach being different.

An example of a feature being missing is that you can't yet animate nodes directly, like you'd expect in the compositor. I used drivers with a custom property to make the texture move.
This does not mean that you can't animate properties, but they don't show up in the graph editor, dope sheet or timeline. This means that you can't change the interpolation method or adapt it for endless animation with extrapolation.

2.8 is really stunning and does take some getting used to, so please don't think of this as a put down, but I am saying that I don't think 2.8 is quite as intuitive as I expected it to be. For example, I have never needed to use a custom property to drive a simple "texture along a surface" action - it feels like a workaround...

This was done without compositing. I wanted to see if it was possible to not only make it, but make it without compositing and you can. Though I'd still recommend knowing how to use compositing for it - yay learning! hahaha.