Puppet Tool/ Autotrace not working AE 2025

[Oscar29062179w8ny]

I've been having problems with the puppet tool in AE 2025 for a bit now, even when trying to autotrace a png or a simple image, autotrace seems to get stuck at 50% with the "remaining time" going up indefinitely and never finishes, thus not letting me use the puppet tool to animate. Anyone else having this problem or know of a workaround? thanks!

[Ann Bens]

Moved from Premiere Pro to After Effects forum.

[Rick Gerard]

Remove the background in Photoshop instead of using After Effects. You'll get much better results than having After Effects do the work. 

I assume you know you cannot animate the transform properties (Position, Scale, Rotation, Anchor Point) on a Puppet Pin layer. You have to animate the Puppet Pins, precompose the layer moving all attributes, and then animate the transform properties of the pre-comp.

[steveignite]

This is now an issue for me too. The puppet tool has become unuseable. If I try to add a pivot point, then it starts autotracing, goes to 50% almost immediately, and then stays on 50% forever. There is a 'skip' button, but clicking it means that the pivot point does not appear. Switching between the new system and the legacy system does not help either.

A quick google shows that quite a few people are experiencing this now - for example, https://www.reddit.com/r/AfterEffects/comments/nwsoyc/puppet_tool_auto_trace_never_works/

They found a screen recorder was causing it to hang, but that's not the case for me, so it must be a wider conflict issue. I think it looks pretty clear that this is a bug in the latest build (I am on 25.1.0). I also have 24.6.3 and have no issues at all with the puppet tool. Am going to have to use AE2024 to to puppet tool work, export and then import renders into AE2025 as a workaround.

Would be great if someone could look into this bug.

[steveignite]

I'm bumping this as there's been no response from Adobe staff yet. It seems to be a bug with the latest version - any thoughts?

[JohnColombo]

Hi @Oscar29062179w8ny & @steveignite,

Thank you both reporting this issue and for your patience with our response.

Would either of you be able to share an image or project that gets stuck at the autotracing step? In trying a few images (PNG, PSD, and JPEG) and pre-comps containing images, I'm not seeing a failure to autotrace when adding a Puppet Pin. It's possible another aspect of the project or media is contributing, so a collected project that fails to autotrace would be ideal if you can share it.

Thank you both again for any further information,

- John, After Effects Engineering Team 

[Oscar29062179w8ny]

hi @JohnColombo ! as of the latest Build (25.2) The issue seems to have resolved and autotrace is working again! thank you for your reply

[steveignite]

Also working for me now 🙂

Will let you know if I have issues with it again, though.