meshes?

One feature that would probably set it apart from the rest is if we had some type of mesh distortion that can be modified as a region as too easily animate moving and deforming textures making for some really nice effects like clothes with patterns on them for anime characters and taking the load of having 3000 outlines that make pattern or detail on some clothes
If it can not be completely done do to the nature of how the image loading voodoo is done it would be nice at least a distort layer like spherize that can be a little more customizable

Yeah! I’m searching that too!
I have in mind a way to do it but need to understand much more how the code of synfig is organized.
I have in mind something like this:

A deformation type layer (like spherize, warp or stretch) has two parameters (among others that are common):
a) One straight segment.
b) One animatable bline.

The layer would map the source to the deformed 2D space based on the deformation of the straight segment compared with the bline. The 2D ->2D mapping is based on a curvilinear coordinates of the undeformed 2D space to the deformed 2D space. The curvilinear coordinates for a given point in the deformed space are 1) the “shortest perpendicular distance” () from the point to the curve/segment and 2) the curve/segment length at the projection place on the curve of the given point. () also keeps in which side of the curve/segment the point is.

This would allow produce curved texts and any other evil deformation you want.

In Synfig, this kind of 2D to 2D deformation is produced in a reverse way: you know what’s the dimensions (rectangular area) of the deformed 2D area. Based on it you should be able to calculate the area where the first comes from by a deformation operation. If the deformation is uniform for every point in the plane the calculation is “simple” (eg. a rotation) but if the deformation is not uniform then the thing gets complicated.

I hope I can have more time and can implement this idea. I call it “Bend layer”.
-G