To achieve the effect you're looking for, where line art and color layers are separate but work together seamlessly, you can use a combination of techniques in Spine. Here's a step-by-step approach:
Separate Layers: Keep your line art and color layers separate. This allows you to change colors easily without affecting the line art.
Mesh Duplication: Create a mesh for your color layer. Once you have the mesh set up, you can duplicate it for the line art layer. Ensure that both meshes have the same vertices and weights to maintain alignment and deformation consistency.
Linked Meshes: Consider using linked meshes if you want to apply the same deformation to both the line art and color layers. This way, any changes to the mesh will automatically apply to both layers.
Draw Order and Visibility: Make sure the draw order is set correctly so that the line art appears above the color layer. If your line art disappears when you duplicate the mesh, check the draw order and ensure that the line art is not being hidden by other elements.
Mesh Visibility: If the image goes missing when you duplicate the mesh, ensure that the path to the image is correct and that the image is not being hidden by other elements in the draw order.
Color Changes: For changing colors in the character creation screen, you can use Spine's skinning feature to swap out color layers or use tinting to adjust colors dynamically.
By following these steps, you should be able to achieve the desired effect of having separate line art and color layers that work together seamlessly, allowing for color changes without affecting the line art.