Visual Effects 2: Final Project (Maya Shatter effect)

This week, we were allowed to choose any visual effect type that of our choice to create our final project with. I had just recently done research on Maya's shatter effect, so I decided to use that effect for  my final project. Honestly, this turned out to be my favorite project from this class so far. I really had fun with project - and even added in a little holiday spirit in it, just for fun! For this project, I used passive colliders (the floor), gravity fields (both ornaments), a radial field (the shattered ornament), nCloth (the cloth in the background), and Maya's shatter effect. When I say "both ornaments", I mean that I did a visibility swap between the first ornament (falling straight down to the floor), and the second ornament (the one that shatters). The swap took place as soon as the ornament touched the floor. For texturing, I used MIA material x shaders for the ornaments so that I could create their shiny, reflective appearance. For the texture of the floor, I used a file node of a wood texture and created a bump map in photoshop. For the blanket in the background, I just simply used a file node for it's texture. As for the lights in the scene, I used two point lights (both orange/yellow lights). The main issue that I ran into this project was getting the shatter effect to work properly for me. I had to key the magnitude of the radial field as well as the gravity so that I could control how much the ornament shattered. That took a little while of trial and error to figure out. Also, once the shatter took place, only the ornament would shatter outward so I had to manually key the metal top piece of the ornament to make it look like it fell off of the ornament as it shattered. Overall, however, I really enjoyed learning about the shatter effect and would love to continue on with visual effects in the future! Thank you for your time and interest! Also, happy holidays! :)
Please check out my artist Facebook page: www.facebook.com/ShannonGilmoreArtwork