I then copied over the cup layer, masked the shadow, transformed it, reduced its opacity and removed its saturation, to create a reflection of it on the table. I also fixed the shadow made by the cup, by adding some bulge distort to make round over my arm. I removed some render artefacts found in some of my scenes, by increasing the size some of my masks, to cover up some extra shadowing. To finalize my composition, I first made some small adjustments and refinements.
I think though overall there is a lot of room for me to improve especially in my filming skills and the more advanced feature of maya's rendering engine. I also should of worked harder on setting up clearer tracking points for Boujou to track, as their was not enough motion in the shots, for me to properly track my camera and set up my scene, which in the end, was mainly done by eye using the camera setting detected in Boujou.
But it was far better than my iPhone 5's camera which is what I was going to originally use.
One thing I would definitely do in the future is procure a better quality camera, though I had managed to get borrow one from my friend, I was disappointed with the quality of the footage. I was finding that even with my decent computer, After Effects was struggling to deal with all the assets and effects, which meant that any minor adjustment took ages to implement and refine as the loading time for each frame within AE grew ever longer. I did not end up doing this mainly due to time constraints, but also by the end of the project, my work file and after effects composition had grown incredibly large. Another minor/major feature I also didn't get around to doing was roto-scoping the front edge of my face and body to implement some illumination to simulate light from the portal. Rather then playing with the advanced and very extensive settings for nCloth to get the paper right. I think that, it was best for me to exclude it as I used my time instead to further refine the rest of my composition. Though some features where left out, like using nCloth in Maya to simulate the piece of paper being sucked into the portal. I believe I came close enough to what I imagined my final composition to be. I feel happy with my project itself, even though the end product is not exactly how I envisioned it, or with all the effects I wanted. But not only have I improved with specific programs, but with the sheer size of my project and extent of my files, I had to learn to deal with complex compositions with many camera angles and organizing my working files in an ordered manner which I found to be a challenge in the project. I have also built upon my previous maya knowledge, though the use of scene set up for compositing, and special mental ray maya materials, like the useBackground material to project shadows as well as others. I have made use of various tools and tricks within after effects, such as chroma keying, luma matte tracking, roto-scoping, particle effects and colour/grain adjustment. I also think that through my extensive use in After Effects in this unit, I have familiarised myself and improved with this program greatly. Through the course of this project, I have introduced myself to camera tracking via Boujou, which had a steep learning curve, but is a skill I feel will be incredibly useful in the future. Overall I am very happy with my final composition, I feel I have successfully managed to challenge myself and improve my skills in a number of areas.