[John Cuevas]

One method would be to make a duplicate of you layer with the light sweep and mask to the areas that you want to be effected by the light. Like this: 7866_lightsweep.aep.zip

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

You could put all the sliders on one Null control layer. When I made that A variable, I just picked whipped to it, but each expression slider will have a different name “slider” “slider 2″…so you could type it in if you wanted, just need to get the naming correct.

Also you can rename the slider Control itself if that will make things easier, for instance, you could rename your slider control–position control and your expression would look like:

A = thisComp.layer(“Control”).effect(“position control”)(“Slider”);

Hope that helps you out, I only know the basics of expressions.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

I made a quick example project—I used the red channel to constrain my particles to just that area.

7865_particleplayground.aep.zip

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Use the Layer map for the particle precomp.

Layer Map controls
By default, the Cannon, Grid, Layer Exploder, and Particle Exploder create dot particles. To replace the dots with a layer in the composition, use the Layer Map. For example, if you use a movie of a single bird flapping its wings as a particle source layer, After Effects replaces all dots with an instance of the bird movie, creating a flock of birds. A particle source layer can be a still image, a solid, or a nested After Effects composition.

To constrain the particle, I would probably make an inverted map of you numbers in a precomp, and then in the persistent property mapper, use that layer to set the life span of the particles born in the areas without numbers to 0.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

I’ve been there, there really isn’t an easy way to do this.

The only thing I can think of is creating a clean overlay for each piece of glitter, then tracking in AE, then apply the track to your clean overlay. Still going to be a lot of work, and you will end up with some blending issues.

If reshoots aren’t possible, I would try some creative editing first, clean-up work second.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

I’d use a particle emitter like AE’s Particle Playground or Trapcode Particular

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Make “A” a variable that’s linked to a slider on a control null layer.

Null layer named “Control”:

A = thisComp.layer("Control").effect("Slider Control")("Slider");
x = A*Math.cos(12*time); y = 600; [x,y]

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Boy are you in luck…

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/1053982#1053986

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Are you using Amortype or the little project I made?

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

This might be easier—Here I just made 2 text animators, one scales up the text past what you want, the other brings it back down a bit. All you need to do is copy the first offset parameter into the second offset parameter and move it a couple of frames back.

7861_textovershoot.aep.zip

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.