When you are new to AE you absolutely MUST vet the folks doing the tutorials. A few years ago about 80% of the tutorials were produced by folks that knew what they were doing and maybe 80% of those gave accurate explanations and efficient workflows. Unfortunately, now, about half or more of the tutorials you will find on YouTube fall into the category of bad advice and lousy workflows. Some are completely wrong. I would give the tutorial you are following a D because even though he eventually gets the job done the workflow is not applicable to any kind of professional results and more was left out than explained. I could not produce repeatable predictable results using his workflow.
That said when looking to learn AE look for tutorials on standard workflows before you look for tutorials on creating specific effects. If you think you need Camera Tracking, learn all about camera tracking. For some compositing tasks, it is a very good tool, for others, it is the worst possible choice. To learn about Rotobrush learn all about Rotobrush. It is a complex tool suited for a limited number of masking tasks and completely unsuited for others. If you want to learn about compositing computer-generated objects or images with footage you need to learn about the techniques involved in layering. Layering has nothing to do with AE, it has everything to matching perspective, lighting, color, and camera movement.
I take it that you are trying to get the child to walk across the floor on pillows and replace the floor. That means you need a separate layer for the girl and the pillows. Rotobrush may be acceptable for the girl but her legs are probably going to be close to the same color as the floor so Rotobrush may take some serious tweaking to get work. The only part of the girl you need to put on a separate layer is the part that actually has the floor behind it. The pillows are probably best put on their own layer and simple masking would probably be the easiest option for getting that layer separated from the floor. I can't tell without seeing the actual footage and the camera move.
As far as Warp Stabilizing and Camera Tracking, that also depends entirely on the shot. If I were doing Camera Tracking I would NEVER warp stabilize before camera tracking because Warp Stabilizing bends images optically and that fouls up solving for a perfect AE camera and WS should be applied to the entire composite so the warping is uniform across the entire composite. Again, to give the best advice we have to see the entire shot.
From what I can see and guess I would first hand animate a mask for just the floor using a separate solid layer. I would then animate a second mask, using a solid layer for the pillows. I usually add a colored solid, set the blend mode to screen or overlay so I can see through it, then animate a mask. These layers will be used for track mattes for other layers create the layers. Maybe you need to do some camera tracking to lay down the lava layer, but maybe some motion tracking or corner pin tracking would work better. It all depends. Once you have all of the layers then you just stack them up and work on the color correction, edges, and lighting to sell the shot.
I hope this helps a bit. Vet your trainers, make sure you understand basic operations and workflows, and study books on compositing and visual effects to understand the basic principals of compositing, because those principals do not change and are not dependant at all on the software.
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