The Pro version of Finale 3D has the capability of importing drone show scripts (file type “.vviz”) created externally in drone design software. In Finale 3D you can combine the imported drone shows along with fireworks in the 3D view for the purpose of designing hybrid shows or making videos. The menu item to import a drone show is “File > Import > Import drone show”. The function will import or re-import the drone show, merging it into the active show which may already contain pyro or drones. Importing a drone show replaces any existing drones in the active show while leaving pyro unaffected.
Figure 1 – Example drone show imported into Finale 3D to combine with fireworks
In Finale 3D, drones are represented as positions. In Figure 1, the pink positions in the shape of a heart in the sky are the drones. If you import a drone show with 300 drones, the import function will add 300 positions to the show you are working on, with position names identifying the drones, like D001 and D002. Drones may contain pyro payloads or colored LED light effects or both. Thus, in addition to importing positions to represent the drones themselves, the import function also imports effects in the script window and the Per-show effects collection to represent the visual effects attached to the drones.
To avoid overwhelming the timeline and script window with so many events as to make scripting pyro difficult, the import function automatically groups the imported drone effects into a single row in the script window, and hides the trajectories and timeline bars of the drone effects in the 3D view and timeline. You can see all the drone effects as individual rows or collapse them into a single row by clicking the blue gear icon in the upper right of the script window and toggling “Show groups as one row”. If you want to unhide the drone effects’ timeline bars and trajectories, you can do the menu item “Script > Unhide all”. To re-hide them, do “Edit > Select special > Select drone effects” and “Script > Hide special > Hide timeline bars and trajectories as group”.
Designing and exporting the drone show
When designing and exporting the drone show in drone show software, you need to specify any pyro effects carried by the drones (if any), and you need to specify the compression of the file when you export it. The Verge Aero drone design software shown in Figure 2 has dialogs for these purposes shown in Figure 3 and Figure 4.
Figure 2 – Verge Aero drone design software
In addition to the LED light values specified as RGB colors, the Verge Aero design software supports four “slots” for pyro payloads of drone effects. A pyro payload is typically a gerb, but it could also be a comet shooting down, or a comet “cake” that shoots four comets out radially. In Finale 3D, pyro payload effects are imported aiming down, not up, since that is the usual case.
Figure 3 – Specifying pyro payloads on drones
The two pieces of information needed for a pyro payload are the VDL, specifying the visual appearance, and the optional part number, identifying the stock keeping unit for purpose of inventory tracking or matching up the effect in the drone show design to pyro effect definitions in your inventory in Finale 3D (for details see Table 1, below). The VDL is a text description of the visual appearance of the effect, like “10s Gold Gerb” for a 10 second gold gerb effect, or “25mm Red Comet” for a one inch red comet. Finale 3D will create a visual simulation of the effect based on the VDL description, using whatever parameters you specify in the description. To specify various durations of gerbs, just type “10s Gold Gerb” or “20s Gold Gerb”, for example.
Figure 4 – Choosing compression level in export dialog
The file size for an exported drone show may be inconveniently or prohibitively large if exported at the highest quality level. It is not hard to imagine that the file would be large, as it needs to contain the motion paths and color changes for hundreds of drones. The export dialog in the Verge Aero software gives you the ability to specify the quality level of the exported data, which affects compression: the higher the quality, the larger the file.
Since drones move fairly smoothly, the compression algorithms can reduce the size of the file substantially with very little visual difference. Thus you can likely set the quality level low enough to reduce the file size to 20Mb or so while still appearing very high quality, which will make the file easy to import into Finale 3D. At higher quality levels, your exported file may be more than 100Mb. Depending on your machine resources you may have difficulty importing files that are extremely large into Finale 3D.
Table 1 – Special fields of imported drone data
| Field Name | Value | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| Custom Part Field of effects imported into the Per-show effects collection | drone | The Custom Part Field helps the import function decide whether to overwrite or delete effect definitions in Per-show effects if you are re-importing a drone show. Since importing a drone show is intended to replace any previously imported drone data in the active show, the import function deletes existing effects in the Per-show effects collection that have “drone” in the Custom Part Field. Any new effect added by the import function will have “drone” in the Custom Part Field to ensure that re-importing will delete or overwrite it with newer content from the file being imported.
All LED effects and any pyro payload effects that do not have part numbers in the imported script file will be imported, and will thus have Custom Part Field of “drone”. Pyro payload effects that do have part numbers will also be imported — unless their part numbers match part numbers of existing effects that do not have Custom Part Field of “drone”, in which case the effect definitions being imported are ignored in lieu of the existing effect definitions for the same part numbers. If you are importing drone shows with LED effects exclusively, you don’t need to pay attention to the Custom Part Field. However, if you are importing drone shows with pyro payload effects that correspond to effects in your inventory collections then you probably want to use the effect definitions from your inventory collections rather than the placeholder effect definitions constructed from the VDL in the imported script file. In this case, the best workflow is: 1) In your drone show design, use part numbers for the pyro payload effects that match your inventory part numbers, 2) Import the drone show into Finale 3D, 3) Do “Effects > Update per-show effects…” to update the imported effect definitions to match your inventory, 4) If and when you re-import the drone show into Finale 3D, you will not need to repeat step (3) since the re-imported effects will not overwrite the updated effect definitions that do not have “drone” in the Custom Part Field. |
| Custom Script Field of events imported into the script window | drone | The Custom Script Field helps the import function decide whether to overwrite or delete events in the script window. Since importing a drone show is intended to replace any previously imported drone data in the active show, the import function deletes existing events in the script that have “drone” in the Custom Script Field. Any new event added by the import function will have “drone” in the Custom Script Field to ensure that re-importing will delete or overwrite it with newer content from the file being imported. |
| Type of positions imported into the positions window | drone | The Type of the imported positions representing drones is “drone” as opposed to “pyro” or “fixture” or “slave”. Positions with Type of “drone” are drawn in the magenta color, to make them recognizable from pyro or fixture positions. The Type value also supports the “Edit > Select special > Select drone effects” function and similar functions that recognize events as applying to drones based on the Type of position that houses them. Lastly, the position Type also affects addressing. Since pyro payloads of drones generally need firing system addresses (something has to ignite them!) but LED light effects on drones do not need firing system addresses, the addressing functions in Finale 3D do not assign firing system addresses to effects of Type “light” if they are on positions of Type “drone” (see Why is ‘Type’ so important? What depends on it?). |
| Duration of events in the script window | Duration of LED light effects | Imported pyro effects contain their duration in the VDL itself, as in “10s Gold Gerb”. Imported drone LED lights turn on and off and change colors during the show continuously, so Finale 3D represents the LED light effects that change over time as long duration, animated effects. Finale 3D divides the total LED effect duration into segments of maximum 60 seconds, and creates individual animated effects for each segment.
The LED effects’ color animation information is stored in the Effect Data field of the script window. Since imported LED light effects are limited to 60s duration, a flight path of a drone lasting longer than 60s will require multiple events, back to back in the script. |
| Effect Data of events in the script window | RGB color animation information | Imported LED light effects for drones have a VDL description that includes the term ScriptRGB, as in the VDL, “ScriptRGB Point Light”. That term indicates the color of the light effect, which may animate over time, is specified by information in the Effect Data field of the script event. |
| VDL of effects in the Per-show effects collection | Pyro payload description like “10s Gold Gerb” or LED light description, “ScriptRGB Point Light” | The VDL of imported LED light and pyro effects specifies the visual description of the effect. All LED light effects use the same effect in the Per-show effects collection. The effect’s color animation and duration are specified by fields in the script window (Effect Data and Duration). |
| Motion Data of imported positions in the positions window | Position and optionally orientation animation information | Imported drones are represented as positions whose motion paths are specified in the Motion Data field of the positions. |
Table 2 – Example files and downloads
| Download link | Explanation |
| test-AGT.vviz | Example Verge Aero drone show with animated RGB lights |
| test-pyro.vviz | Example Verge Aero drone show with pyro payloads |