Can't get layered texture to keyframe properly? (Maya 2019)

[toyyoda95]

I need to switch between texture 1 and texture 2 on the same model during an animation. I saw a ton of tutorials from 2013 recommending blend nodes but can't find any modern documentation on or trace of a blend node in Maya 2019, so after a bunch of searching, I gave up and made a layered file. Which is fine, it does the same thing, I can move the slider and switch from the first texture to the second. Except that I can't keyframe it. 

I supposedly have the option to keyframe it. Old tutorials keyframe this stuff. I can hit s or right click > key and it highlights red as if it's keyframed, except no frames actually appear in the timeline, and if I set 2 frames (say, texture 1 at frame 10 and texture 2 at frame 12, so that before frame 10 texture 1 would appear and after frame 12, texture 2 would appear) it seems that every keyframe overrides everything else. When I set it to keyframe so texture 2 is visible, texture 2 is ALWAYS visible, and if I keyframe texture 1 a second time, texture 1 is ALWAYS visible and this repeats no matter where I try to key them or how many times I've tried. I don't know what else to do. Is there another way to do this? Or some other way to keyframe I'm unaware of? I've been looking for hours and couldn't find anything helpful online, and 90% of the stuff I found was from years outdated programs, but the old blend method could be keyed like this. I even say a tutorial with a layered texture where they said it could be keyed, but he didn't do so, and that tutorial (like the blend ones) was from 2013. I need to do this on a whole bunch of objects simultaneously, and I've asked about 4 people more experienced than me in animation, but none of them had an answer (they either weren't familiar with animated textures or they used Max, not Maya, so they had no idea). The autodesk documentation about layered textures doesn't even mention keyframing at all, and the older documentation is completely outdated and no longer correct (all the old documentation says it'll not only preserve the color of a file image but also transparency, which it doesn't at all). Any ideas? Thank you.

[teddude75]

Just right click on the alpha attribute and set a key.

[toyyoda95]

Thanks but as I said in my description, that's exactly what I was doing. It wasn't working properly at all - frame 1 would claim it's set to 0.00 (texture 1) and frame 2 to 1.00 (texture 2) but ONLY texture 2 would be visible throughout the entire animation. I repeated this several times, and it never worked properly. 

[toyyoda95 · Accepted solution]

Passing along the solution that worked for me based on conversation with Marko S, an autodesk employee that was able to help me through this whole thing. 

1: Blend materials should be available in Maya 2019 and the fact that it wasn't for me means it's missing. I plan on resetting things in the future but at the current moment and project I don't have time to risk it, so here's what to do if you also can't use blend mode/have to use a layered texture for some reason. Apparently Blend is better/simpler (layered textures don't use transparency of uploaded images so I'm hoping that maybe blend does on future projects). 

2: Viewport 2.0 has an update bug for Layered Texture when using Evaluation Mode "Parallel". This is why basic keyframing didn't display properly or match the keyframe information 

3: To update Viewport 2.0 properly, switch Evaluation Mode from "Parallel" to "DG" (in Preferences > Settings > Animation > Evaluation)

For me, switching to "DG" caused my entire animation to reload, play through and update, and then my keyframes actually effected my texture properly and responded in the right way. Also, I couldn't view keyframes selecting the material (which is what I'd read to do), or the alpha, but I needed to scroll down and hit the "select" button beneath the layered texture alpha info. A simple solution, but I couldn't find any information at all about in my research, so hopefully it'll help someone else down the line.