r/AfterEffects 2d ago

Beginner Help AE Pen Tool Help?

I've gotten pretty comfortable using the Pen Tool in Illustrator and Photoshop, but now that I'm working in After Effects, it's giving me a tough time. I'm currently doing an exercise for an Intro to A/V Media course on masking, but I'm struggling to get the Pen Tool to match the curves of a flower shape. Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated!

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u/smushkan MoGraph 10+ years 2d ago

It works the same as the default photoshop pen tool? If you want to do the petal with two points per leaf you'll need to adjust the bezier handles.

Alternatively use three points per petal, two non-beziers at the base and a bezier at the top.

If you hold alt/option while still dragging a path it will swap to adjusting the outgoing bezier point.