Help! Novice Adobe After effects user stuck on masks!

Question

Hi all! I am brand new to After Effects, as in really new. I just started tutorials today.

The first project I did was one that entailed drawing a rectangle on the screen and animating it popping in with a logo.

The second project I did was one that involved creating a mask.

Then there was a challenge. To create what we did in the first project, drawing a rectangle layer and animating it to appear on the screen.

Super easy, right?

Well, when I opened a new project and went thru the steps I had learned, I clicked on the shape tool at the top of After Effects, selected rectangle, and proceeded to draw on the screen and--

It did not draw a rectangle. It drew instead a rectangular mask.

I closed the project, checkec preferences, tried everything, but for some reason, when I click the shape tool, the settings were not for drawing a rectangle but for drawing a mask. How do I turn this off? How do o go back to good old-fashioned shape tool? I can't go forward in my lessons until I figure this out!

Please help!

Rick Gerard · Answer

If you have a layer selected in the timeline the pen tool and the shape tools will create a mask. The Create Shape option in the toolbar will not be available.

If you have a shape layer selected in the timeline the pen tool and the shape tools will have the option to create a shape or create a mask in the toolbar. Changing the options changes the behavior. With a shape layer selected the tools will always create a new path or shape in the same shape layer. The shape option looks like a star, the mask option looks like a square with a checkerboard background and a circle. They are right at the end of the toolbar.

If there is no layer selected in the timeline then the pen and shape tools will always create a new shape layer.

What tutorials are you following? The best place to start is with the learn options on the AE Home Screen, or the User Guide on this forum, or the learning section of the AE product page. They will all take you here: Learn AE

You have to be very careful about choosing your tutorials. There are more misleading and downright wrong tutorials on YouTube presented by well-meaning enthusiasts than there are good ones. Make sure you Vet your trainers. Just the number of views is no indication of the quality of the training.

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