Is there anything like the Sets feature, but for individual vertices instead of entire layers?
Basically: There’s a few vertices that I’m going to be animating together a lot, but these vertices belong to several different layers (layers which also have many OTHER vertices which I DON’T want to move). I know that I can select vertices from several layers by selecting multiple layers and then selecting individual vertices, but once I’ve done the work of selecting the vertices I have in mind, is there any way for me to save that selection so that I can select it again more easily after I’ve lost the selection from making other changes in the meantime?
How much handles you need to animate that this became a problem though? Maybe linking some vertices of one spline (layer) to another would be an acceptable workaround?
You mean, making a new layer full of vertices that only exists to have various other layers link their vertices to it, so I can easily move all of those vertices by moving the (invisible) layer that they’re linked to?
That seems like it would work, but it would also take forever to set up—there’s no kind of “clone selected vertices into other layer and then link them” operation I guess?
Depending your needs, you can “export” a “master” vertex.
Then link “slave” vertices to the “master” vertex.
This way you can animate only one, the others will follow and you can also apply modifications with the converters.
Of course, the “master” vertex can be in a dedicated invisible layer.
But the operation you describe at the end is a bit too much specific for have been developed yet.
Yeah, something like that. The layer doesn’t have to be invisible, it can be a part of a composition. This technique is called “Sewing splines” (what BobSynfig describes can be a part of it). I don’t know your workflow, so I am not sure if it’s actually appropriate, but check it out anyway.
Unfortunately, it’s very tricky to set up. Synfig doesn’t make it very user-friendly. I attached a simple example, in it you can see 3 layers. Layers “top” and “bottom” are partly connected to “middle” layer, so you can manipulate them just by adjusting vertices of the middle layer. LinkedSplines.sifz (2.1 KB)