Autodesk Maya help! Trying to build an animated texture rig

Dao

New poster here

I've been trying to use Maya 3D and make an animated texture layer rig of sorts. I'm using a layered texture to use several different animation loops on it, and I'm trying to set an attribute on the nurbs controller that let's me switch between the different loops.
My plan was having a switch that lets me turn the alpha of the different animations so I can pick the loop I need to animate, while having the other loops effectively hidden. I was planning on doing this via Driven Keys.
It didn't work.
Maya for some strange reason, doesn't allow me to connect driven keys to ANY of the alphas in the layered texture, it doesn't even recognize the things.
I can key the alphas normally, but I really need to figure out how to make it switch quickly and easily, thus why I'm building the rig in the first place.
If any of you have any ideas or suggestions or anything really, that would be appreciated. Thanks.

Illusions

You can either use expressions or connect attribute nodes directly. Maya is all node based, so just because something is a geometry or NURBS node doesn't mean it can't be fed into a shader node. If you select a polygon or NURBS object in your main window and open the Hypershade window, and select Graph > Input and Output Connections (or click the double triangle icon) you'll see the nodes for them. If you select both a shader and geo, you'll see the nodes for both and be able to connect them. When connecting, use "Other..." to see all attributes you can connect.

An additional note: If using this method, remember the restraints of the attributes you are linking to. For instance, color is set 0 to 1, so anything below or above 1 will loop back (1.5 is actually .5, 2 is 1, etc). If you need to, connect to the various math or tool nodes that Maya provides before connecting to the attribute you want to finally link to.