Pen Tool won't stop automatically turning into Add Vertex Tool

Question

Hello!

I'm taking an AE course that's teaching us how to put text partially behind a wall in some footage. To do that, they had us 3D Track Camera the footage, add the text into the 3D scene, duplicate the footage layer (keep the duplicate 2D), add a solid (make it 3D) and mask it out to match the outline of the wall, and use that solid as a track matte for the duplicate footage which is above the original footage layer and text in the layer stack. (I'm not sure if it's relevant, but we also normalized the scene in a previous lesson and there are still reference nulls in the scene as well).

I've done similar things before so all the instructions make sense to me and works perfectly for the instructor in the demonstration; but, for some reason when I do it, if I hover over certain areas of the solid, it'll automatically turn into the Add Vertex Tool so I can't mask out the wall.

I've tried restarting AE , resetting preferences to default checking for updates, etc. It's really weird because the pen tool works fine masking in any other circumstance, and it works fine in some areas of the solid, just not where I need it. I thought maybe there was some sort of glitch where the layers behind the solid (the nulls and text) might be interfering somehow since it's only certain parts of the solid having the problem, but the issue happens in some places regardless if there's nulls/text behind the solid or not.

Has this happened to anyone else? Does anyone know what might be causing this? Any help is much appreciated!

Rick Gerard · Answer

Press v to activate the selection tool. Next, click on the Pen tool in the Toolbar until the pen tool options appear, and make sure that the top one is selected. Now, try creating a path. You should see a white square near the bottom right corner of the tool graphic until you click somewhere on a layer. The white square will go away, leaving only the Pen. When you click around the layer, new points will be added. When you close the path by clicking on the starting vertex, the path will close, and the white square will reappear. If you move over the path between two vertices, you should get a plus sign near the bottom right corner of the tool. That is normal. A black pointer appears if the pen's tip passes close to a vertex, allowing you to select that point and move it around. Holding down the Alt/Option key changes the Pen to the Convert Vertex tool, allowing you to click and drag out Bezier handles or change the strength of a Rotobezier curve.

You must manually select one of the pen tool options from the toolbar to lock the tool to the add, subtract, convert, or feather tool. Just clicking on the pen tool in the toolbar will not reset it, and you should be able to see the plus, minus, convert, and feather icons in the toolbar, but using the keyboard shortcut to activate the tool will reset it to the default Pen or alternate Feather tool only.

Let us know if any of those instructions help.

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