Sorry, cant anwer my own question. It appears J acts differently if there is a face present or not. With face, works as in movie.

  • Jonathan Lampel replied

    True, J connects across faces, so if there's no face there it will find a different route around the mesh. If there's no face there you could use F instead to fill the gap. 

  • Michael Natale(mnatale) replied

    Yeah, that was confusing for me as well. I was trying to join the vertices after deleting the ngon face and it wasn't working. 

  • Scott McClellan(pffsfs) replied

    Thank God for other people asking questions. I couldn't for the life of me get 'J' to work as in the video either (without a face). Andn thank you for the video. I'm kinda skipped around this learning flow and landed here. I'll get back tot hat plane eventually Mr. Williamson. lol