I’ve been stuck on this problem for 2 days. I have created several switch groups in the past, and they work well. But now I am trying to use a switch group to make a tail wag on a sheep. So I created a switch group with two tails, one up and one down. I sized and centered the tails on the sheep with animation mode turned off. I then moved the yellow time cursor to frame 300, where I want the tail to appear, turned on animation mode and switched tails. I was successful getting the tail to move up. But, the sheep’s tail appears at frame 1 of the animation, and I want it to appear at frame 300. I have three waypoints, but the first one appears at frame 300. So, with the Switch group folder highlighted, I went to frame 0 and looked for a waypoint. There was none, so I dragged the yellow time cursor with my switch folder highlighted, to frame 300 in hopes that would solve the problem. It didn’t work. So I highlighted the active child layer, and moved the yellow time cursor to 0. The layer still appeared at frame zero. I t seems in the past I have solved this problem that way, but nothing seems to help. I have started taking notes when I successfully make these moves, but so far, I haven’t been able to fix this problem with my switch group. I’ve been over the tutorial on switch groups a dozen times, but no luck. Any tips would be appreciated.
I know I’m being a stubborn asking it again but: please, split your text in paragraphs for easier reading.
In Synfig, layers “exist” in the whole time line.
You can hide a layer (or switch group) changing its Opacity (in version 1.3.12. It was called Amount before this version):
- 1.0 means fully visible;
- 0.0 means fully transparent.
So, animate this Opacity parameter using Constant interpolator (for a sudden change of value from the initial 0.0 to 1.0 at frame #300).
I’m just trying to do switch groups as the gum road tutorial #6 explains them. I was able to create switch groups for my character’s mouth to open and close without any problems, and I didn’t have to mess with the opacity (amount) parameters to do that. But the mouth switch group starts at frame 0, so that must be why I didn’t have to adjust the opacity amount. I’m trying to introduce the sheep’s tail switch group starting at frame 300, since the sheep doesn’t appear until frame 280,
Are you saying that I should set the opacity at 0,0 from frame 0 to 300 for all of the tails in my switch group, then set the opacity to 1.0 at frame 300? I thought about doing this before, so maybe I was on the right track.
I notice that Synfig 1.2.2 crashes often when I try to adjust waypoints or the yellow time line cursor when I’m not in animate mode. The tutorial doesn’t say there are problems with doing that. The version 1.3.12 will crash within 60 seconds when I open it and try to move layers around. I think it has a conflict with my O.S., which is Win10. At this point, I might try to render my animation as a file that can be used in Blender. I’m hoping I won’t have as many problems with Blender, but I have to start practically at the beginning again on my learning curve. With Synfig, every thing I do is by working around the app crashing. It will crash 6, 8 times in a two hour session of working with it. I’m trying to figure out what file type I should render it in, that would be best to use in Blender.
Thanks for any help you can give me. By the way, what is a Constant Interpolator? I usually adjust the waypoints for the Amount\Opacity so they are as close together as possible, so there isn’t any fade-in or fade-out effect. I just want the switch group tails to appear and re-appear quickly, with no fade effect.
Hi!
We was fixed some issues which leads Synfig to crash.
You can test fixed version, by downloading it from here:
https://coolbug.org/downloads/morevna/builds/SynfigStudio-1.5.0-testing-2020.02.29-win64-478b0.zip
This is portable version - no need for installation - just unpack it and run.
Also, if you have stability issues, especially crashes, it would be nice if you could explain the steps that leads to the crash, or make a short video so we can reproduce it.
@KonstantinDmitriev can you help with switch groups?
Yes 
By “move” you mean translation in canvas (I mean, (x,y) coordinates) or sort them in Layer panel (which layer is above which layer; layer order) ?
As ice0 proposed, if you can screencast/record your Synfig Studio usage to let us see any crash in order to let us investigate these crashes… 
Take a look at this video: https://youtu.be/4wyJIDOAklU
And this page Waypoint - Synfig Animation Studio