Nagging question about textures.

Ok I hope somebody can answer this question. I have had it for the last 4 years since I have been using blender.

The manual says “Each Texture has a 3D coordinate (the texture coordinate) as input. The starting point is generally the global coordinate of the 3D point that can be seenin the pixel to be rendered.”

If a texture is something that wraps around and object/mesh. How can it have a “3D” coordinate.Its flat??

At least the procedural textures have a Z-component.

You can see the effect if you add a plane in top view, give it a procedural texture (clouds hard noise or magic is good), add a OfsZ ipo with different Y-axis keys, and render an animation.

What do you mean by different Y-axis keys. If I give it a Offst Z ipo wold that not effect just the z dimension?

Uuups, sorry if I expressed myself misleadingly.

What I ment was the general 2D-coordinate system of the ipo window.
Of course, for the special case of a Z-offset depending on the frame number the assignment of the axis of the ipo window would be:

X-axis = frame number
Y-axis = OfsZ

In other words
For frame 1 enter a key frame with ofsZ = 0
For frame 50 enter a key frame with ofsZ = 1