A catalog of the tens of thousands of unique DMX light fixtures is a long way out, but Finale 3D does keep track of the fixtures it knows about, to facilitate conversion between fixtures and to avoid conflicts. Users can define their own fixtures by creating their own effects that contain within them the fixture definition, and DMX patch, and visualization instructions in the VDL. User-defined fixtures can use fixture IDs in the range 1000000 and up to avoid conflicting with known fixtures listed in Table 1, as it grows.
Table 1 – Supported light fixtures
As indicated in the “Requires initialization” column, some fixture DMX personalities require that user inserts an “Reset Fixture” effect (Standard Effect ID 1201) at the beginning of the show to configure the initial channel values.