Quote-"*Also, is there a way to animate a shader in Carrara so that it would be rotating a map that I have? Or so that it would be scrolling a seamlessly tiled one up and down? I know that, for example, the noise factory option has a transform tab where I can set the noise to animate over time, but I don't see the tab in the Texture Map options. Is there a way around that? Are there plug-ins that can do that?"

Probably the easiest way to do this is to use a previously prepared AVI or QT animation as your texture. Carrara supports this. You can use video files, or image sequences. You can also use this to simulate a TV program on a 3d model television, a Drive-in movie screen, a flying billboard on a blimp etc.