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Download Finale 3D

Finale 3D requires Microsoft Windows 10 or 11, 8GB of RAM and a dedicated graphics card. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 is the recommended graphics card (GPU), though almost any GPU made after 2017 will work. If you use a Mac, you need to install Windows using Bootcamp or Parallels. For more details, see System requirements. Each release below contains all versions of Finale 3D (Demo, Lite, Hobbyist and Pro).

Latest Finale 3D Release (Same Download For All Versions)

finale3d-installer-2024.11.11-f775ad3cf

FULL RELEASE
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  1. Stability improvement: Fixed an issue that would cause a crash if Finale 3D were launched while it was already running. Finale 3D now detects the active instance and brings the main window to the forefront.
  2. New feature: Finale 3D show (.FIN) files can now be opened by double-clicking them, making it no longer necessary to launch Finale 3D and then go to 'File > Open' as a separate step.
  3. Bug fix: Fixed an issue causing the design window to be blank (dark gray) until resized in some situations.
  4. Bug fix: Fixed an issue where the UI elements in the design window, such as the play button, were too large and not clickable when the 'Reduce resolution in edit mode' render setting was enabled.
  5. Sync improvement: The local cached copy of My Effects is now displayed if the sync process at login is cancelled or fails. Previously, if the sync did not complete, My Effects appeared to be empty.
  6. Bug fix: Fixed an issue causing Finale 3D to crash when the 'Show > Temporary settings > Draw trajectory dots instead of effect simulations' option was enabled. This setting turns off the real-time 3D simulation, which may be useful in some situations.
  7. Effects: Fixed a bug causing some effect simulations to be abruptly cut when using the VDL term 'DLY'. This was especially evident for gerbs/fountains.

Latest Beta Release

finale3d-installer-2024.12.30-3034c08cb

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Update Spanish, Russian, and Ukrainian UI translations.
  2. Fixed rack text repositioning bug in rack layout window.
  3. Increased number of user-definable text boxes in rack layout diagrams for the information panel on the right from 4 to 8.
  4. Made the rack layout diagram text boxes apply to the site layout diagrams also.
  5. Excluded the site layout diagram information boxes displaying per-show information from the rack layout diagrams' right panels since the per-show site layout information generally isn't applicable to the rack layout diagrams and since the new text boxes in the rack layout diagrams suffice.
  6. Added more formatting options for the text boxes on the rack/site layout right panels.
  7. Added variables that users can add to the text boxes in rack/site layout boxes to display information drawn from the diagrams or show: {diagram_title}, {diagram_page_number}, {number_of_diagram_pages}, {position}, {universes}, {sections}, {number_of_modules}, {number_of_rails}, {number_of_ematches}, {number_of_pins_used}, {number_of_pins_total}, {number_of_devices}, {number_of_universes}, {rack_counts_table}, {rack_totals_table}, {module}, {rail}, {rack_number}, {rack_cluster}, {rack_name}, {rack_manufacturer}, {rack_notes}, {annotation}.

All Finale 3D Releases And Beta Versions

finale3d-installer-2024.12.30-3034c08cb

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Update Spanish, Russian, and Ukrainian UI translations.
  2. Fixed rack text repositioning bug in rack layout window.
  3. Increased number of user-definable text boxes in rack layout diagrams for the information panel on the right from 4 to 8.
  4. Made the rack layout diagram text boxes apply to the site layout diagrams also.
  5. Excluded the site layout diagram information boxes displaying per-show information from the rack layout diagrams' right panels since the per-show site layout information generally isn't applicable to the rack layout diagrams and since the new text boxes in the rack layout diagrams suffice.
  6. Added more formatting options for the text boxes on the rack/site layout right panels.
  7. Added variables that users can add to the text boxes in rack/site layout boxes to display information drawn from the diagrams or show: {diagram_title}, {diagram_page_number}, {number_of_diagram_pages}, {position}, {universes}, {sections}, {number_of_modules}, {number_of_rails}, {number_of_ematches}, {number_of_pins_used}, {number_of_pins_total}, {number_of_devices}, {number_of_universes}, {rack_counts_table}, {rack_totals_table}, {module}, {rail}, {rack_number}, {rack_cluster}, {rack_name}, {rack_manufacturer}, {rack_notes}, {annotation}.

finale3d-installer-2024.12.20-3e50abe81

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Update German and Polish UI translation.
  2. If application is not front/active, then don't update cursor image.
  3. Enabled Rack and Tube fields in the script table to be selector menus.
  4. Added Showven X4 module type.
  5. Relaxed error checking for importing and validating PDM files, now accepting PDM files that have non-incremental SHOT field value.
  6. Improved the addressing dialog 'Re-arrange' option to support tiltable row racks with pre-wired pins; previously re-arrange didn't support tiltable row racks and pre-wired pins together.
  7. Made the addressing dialog 'Re-arrange' option fully support multiple e-matches per pin IN THE SAME RACK; previously if a rack had multiple e-matches per pin within it, then rearrange would adjust angles to avoid collisions but wouldn't renumber the pins to provide a nice pin sequence; now it does.
  8. Add addressing dialog context sensitive yellow box suggestion to add a pin constraint to prevent sharing pins across different racks.
  9. Improve the 'Reorder pins' function accessed from the rack context menu, now supporting reordering pins even when rack contains multiple effects on the same pin within the rack.
  10. Fixed minor rearrangement bug resulting in valid but unpleasant pin sequences of fully adjustable tube angle racks having only straight up effects in them.
  11. Made rack context menu item 'Reorder pins' work even if rack contains locked pins or pins shared with other racks.
  12. Made rack context menu item 'Reorder pins' apply to all selected racks, not just the one right-clicked on.
  13. Fixed addressing bug in which positions with pre-assigned rails would increment the progression of assigned module numbers even though their own module assignments are from the pre-assigned rails and therefore should affect the progression. The impact of the bug was that if a position with pre-assigned rails was sorted in the middle amongst other positions being addressed, the position following it would begin with module number N + 2, instead of N + 1, where N was the last module assigned in the previous non-pre-assigned rail position.
  14. Fixed addressing bug in which two positions with the same pre-assigned rails and different sections could share the same modules, violating the constraint that modules aren't to be shared across positions.
  15. Improved the addressing function such that when the user specifies addresses are to be assigned in order of position name, that will be the order even if different positions have different sections, or start modules, or blueprints, or pre-assigned rails. Previously, these position attributes would interfere with the sort order by dividing positions into 'addressing groups' having the same values for these properties and sorting the groups relative to each other and then sorting the positions within each group; now positions are only considered to be in a shared addressing group if they can share modules, i.e., there is no position constraint on modules. Thus as long as there is a position constraint on modules, each position will be in its own addressing groups, and the addressing function will sort them as the user expects.
  16. Change 'Renumber racks left to right' to a submenu with eight options, left to right, top to bottom, etc.
  17. Added 'Renumber racks > In order selected'.
  18. Made checkbox border in dialogs thicker so checkboxes are more prominent.
  19. Moved 'Show clock' option in the 'Create video' dialog to make it more discoverable.
  20. Added 'File > Recent shows' submenu with list of recently saved or opened shows.
  21. Changed default setting of 'Show > Clicking song bar zooms to song' to OFF.
  22. Changed wording in add racks dialog from 'Ignored...' to 'Click checkbox on left to add racks' when checkbox for a for a particular kind of rack is unchecked.
  23. Added yellow suggestion box tips in addressing dialog for sort criteria to tell user to add 'Same Rack' before 'Most Horizontal Tilt' in circumstances for which 'Same Rack' yields more sequential assignment of modules.
  24. Added red text hint 'Limit is for entire show' in 'Add racks' dialog when user has entered a limit that is less than the number of racks currently in the show, which usually means the user is interpreting 'Limit' as applying to the position as opposed to the entire show.
  25. Improved side panels of site/rack layout documents and charts, removing the 'Location' and 'Show date' labels when the values are filled in and using the entire width of the side panels for the values, since there often was not enough room horizontally for both the label and value, causing the values to get clipped. Also elide the optional field labels if their values are filled in, so they don't get clipped on the side panels.
  26. Fixed minor clipping bug in report document headers that was present if optional field labels were blank while their values were filled in.
  27. Added hint text in 'Set side panels' dialogs to tell user that information boxes can include multiple lines, and to simply press the Enter key while entering text.
  28. Partially reverted the change that reset the table filters of the windows whenever the user changes shows; now leaves the effects window table filters as is, and clears the others.
  29. Adjusted font size for pin numbers in slice cake racks.
  30. Improved positioning of module numbers on racks in the rack layout window or diagram, fixing some overlapping text problems and centering the module numbers better on thin slice cakes.
  31. Fixed timecode tools for TC created by some versions of FireOne Timecode Wizard software for TC that includes a positive offset.
  32. Added exporter for IGNITE firing system, which exports an XLSX file from which you can copy/paste the rows into IGNITE Show Designer.
  33. Made the IGNITE exporter also put the firing script rows in the clipboard automatically so the user doesn't even need the XLSX file; the user can just paste into IGNITE Show Designer by pressing Ctrl+V.
  34. Changed the UI convention for keyboard modifiers for the rack layout window to SHIFT = more snapping and CONTROL = less snapping, enabling user to press control key after initiating dragging a rack or drawing element to prevent snapping to nearby elements. Unfortunately users running Parallels on a Mac are not able to use SHIFT and CONTROL for this purpose because Parallels does not allow the state of the key modifiers to change while the mouse button is being held.
  35. Added support for the MainFX firing system.
  36. Improvements to MainFX firing system exporter.
  37. Fixed semi-automatic firing in Fire Pioneer exporter, enabling the Track field to fill into the 'Segment' field of the exported script file.
  38. Significant upgrade to rack layout diagrams to provide hybrid diagrams that combine diagram images with text-based reports like wiring scripts or setup lists on the same page.
  39. Added rack layout diagram checkbox options for including annotations in the print area, and for include drawings in print area.
  40. Improved print area calculation for rack layout diagrams to include annotations of other racks in the rack clusters of racks in diagram even if the other racks themselves are not included in the diagram.
  41. In rack layout diagrams grouped by module, changed color of pin and module text to dark gray for more contrast in printed documents, which is possible when grouping by module because if there's only one module per diagram then you don't need different colors to distinguish which module a pin is associated with.
  42. Improved print area calculation to include the module numbers under the racks in a tight bounding box calculation.
  43. Improved page area calculation for rack diagrams to include the text above the racks -- size and rack number if present.
  44. Improved gray contrast of grayed out module numbers on rack diagrams.
  45. Remove some unnecessary translation fields from our user interface to make it easier on people providing translation files.
  46. Fixed bug in VVIZ drone import which caused 'Cannot read file' if floating point numbers had more than 22 characters.
  47. Added rack layout diagram configuration options to control the bounding box of each diagram with respect to annotations and rack clusters and margins and the placement of the module numbers below or to the right of the racks.
  48. Changed the algorithm that laid out the module box graphics at the base of the rack layout window.
  49. Added module box graphics for the rack layout diagrams in the information panel on the right, and removed the module box graphics as overlays over the diagram itself, preventing situations where the module box graphics could potentially cover important information.
  50. Added user-defined text fields in the new information panel on the right of the rack diagram hybrid reports. The user-defined text fields can refer to variables that show for each diagram the position, rack numbers, module numbers, rail numbers, rack clusters. and annotations, enabling the user to pull this information from the diagram and curate it in the information panel on the right.
  51. Added four new standard hybrid rack diagram options, PER POSITION, PER MODULE, PER RACK CLUSTER, and PER SINGLE-SHOT RACK. The PER SINGLE_SHOT RACK option is useful for printing instructions to set up single-shot racks in advance, before bringing them to the shoot site. The PER POSITION and PER MODULE are useful replacements for the wiring script reports that include images and tables per position or per module, whichever suits your workflow. The PER RACK CLUSTER report is suitable for people who represent single-shot racks in Finale as multiple slice racks snapped together as clusters.
  52. Changed the rack layout diagram option for specifying the margin around the content area in the diagram from a percentage basis to an absolute basis in centimeters and meters.
  53. Improved the old rack layout diagram template to include useful information in the side panel.
  54. Added zebra striping to tables in rack diagrams.
  55. Changed font size and padding for tables in rack diagrams to fit 32 rows per page.

finale3d-installer-2024.11.11-f775ad3cf

FULL RELEASE
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  1. Stability improvement: Fixed an issue that would cause a crash if Finale 3D were launched while it was already running. Finale 3D now detects the active instance and brings the main window to the forefront.
  2. New feature: Finale 3D show (.FIN) files can now be opened by double-clicking them, making it no longer necessary to launch Finale 3D and then go to 'File > Open' as a separate step.
  3. Bug fix: Fixed an issue causing the design window to be blank (dark gray) until resized in some situations.
  4. Bug fix: Fixed an issue where the UI elements in the design window, such as the play button, were too large and not clickable when the 'Reduce resolution in edit mode' render setting was enabled.
  5. Sync improvement: The local cached copy of My Effects is now displayed if the sync process at login is cancelled or fails. Previously, if the sync did not complete, My Effects appeared to be empty.
  6. Bug fix: Fixed an issue causing Finale 3D to crash when the 'Show > Temporary settings > Draw trajectory dots instead of effect simulations' option was enabled. This setting turns off the real-time 3D simulation, which may be useful in some situations.
  7. Effects: Fixed a bug causing some effect simulations to be abruptly cut when using the VDL term 'DLY'. This was especially evident for gerbs/fountains.

finale3d-installer-2024.11.07-b50127f9d

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Fix bug: Retry logic had broken in some cases, so that server errors were showing up more frequently.
  2. Fix bug that was causing .FIN files to have all lowercase filenames if they had been opened by double-clicking them.

finale3d-installer-2024.11.05-3bbe3ac9b

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Fix bug causing Finale3D to crash when 'Draw trajectory dots instead of effects' was enabled.
  2. Fix bug causing sims to be abruptly cut off if delayed by DLY. This was especially evident for gerbs/fountains.

finale3d-installer-2024.10.28-f77d3a21f

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Fixed bug: 2d UI elements were too large and not always clickable when 'downscale render resolution in edit mode' was enabled.
  2. Fixed inventory sync issue: When the initial inventory sync fails as you are logging in, we now restore the cached My Effects rather than starting with an empty My Effects.
  3. Changed the file-open handler to not activate the design window after opening a file.
  4. Added some more debug logging for debugging crashes.

finale3d-installer-2024.10.21-f916497c0

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Fixed a crash that would occur if Finale 3D were launched while already running. The software now detects the active instance and brings the main window to the forefront.
  2. Finale 3D show (.FIN) files can now be opened by double-clicking them, making it no longer necessary to launch Finale 3D and then go to 'File > Open' as a separate step.
  3. Added logging to debug startup crashes in OpenGL initialization and CEF initialization.

finale3d-installer-2024.10.12-c33ceac28

BETA RELEASE
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  1. This release focuses on improving overall stability by addressing a common crash experienced by some users. The changes in this release will either fix the issue or, if the crash reoccurs, return valuable information to help us identify and resolve the source of the crash.
  2. Fix issue causing the 3D design window to be blank dark gray until it is resized.

finale3d-installer-2024.09.21-17097dc75

FULL RELEASE
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  1. Video Rendering: Added option to 'Create video' dialog to include clock in rendered videos.
  2. Graphics: Fix 'invalid GPU' error for some drivers.
  3. Machine Compatibility: Reverted a change introduced in the 2024.07.30-934b8a80f beta release for determining machine locale in an attempt to resolve an issue where Finale 3D doesn't run on certain machines.
  4. Finale Inventory: Fixed bug in which the selected locations in 'File > Finale Inventory > Selected locations' appeared to be preserved but weren't actually applied to the shown inventory quantities upon launching the software.
  5. Firing System: Changed Cobra script export description field character limit from 80 to 62 at Cobra's request.
  6. Firing System: Added explanations in the export options dialog for Cobra to clarify the meaning of Timecode 1 and Timecode 2.
  7. Firing System: Changed description field in FireOne and FireOne CSV export to NOT add the device count number in parentheses in front of the effect name.
  8. Firing System: Fixed missing 32-bit DLLs causing FireOne firing system script export failures.
  9. Firing System: Changed FireOne CSV export character limit on Product IDs from 12 to 16.
  10. Firing System: Changed default duration in Pyroneo exported scripts from 500ms to 250ms.
  11. Labels: Added a new labels terms: 'Angle Relative to Single-Shot rack' for tilted single-shot racks to give effect labels the option of showing the angle relative to the rack instead of relative to the entire position.
  12. Labels: Widened menu items for labels blueprint fields and field styles in labels configuration dialog.
  13. Addressing: Add two more context sensitive yellow box suggestions for sort order in addressing dialog, continuing to put effort into making this dialog self-teaching.
  14. Addressing: Remove the rack constraint option for Hobbyist version in addressing dialog since the Hobbyist Version doesn't have the ability to address the show taking into account racks.
  15. Addressing: Made 'Rearrange effects' checkbox in addressing dialog default to ON.
  16. Addressing: Fixed addressing bug wherein 'Module constrained to a single Section' didn't apply to locked addresses in some circumstances.
  17. Addressing: Fixed rack tube assignment bug wherein pre-wired pin racks with a single row of tubes having a pin pattern defined by user specified list in Custom Rack Field did not work correctly.
  18. Addressing: Added instructional error dialog if user addresses a specific position from the racks view, and the position's addresses overflow into rails used by events in other positions. Previously errors were reported as 'Wiring errors' but there was no explanation that the wiring errors were caused by overflowing into rails used by another position.
  19. Addressing: Fixed minor bug wherein if a user addresses a position from the racks view for a firing system whose modules start at 1, while the show default firing system is set to a firing system whose modules start at 0, and if the user has chosen a starting module/rail in the addressing dialog for this position, then the module numbers would start at that module/rail + 1 instead of that module/rail exactly; the problem would go away after the first time because the show default firing system would get updated to the module type in the addressing dialog.
  20. Addressing: Added explanation of wiring errors to addressing summary dialog if the wiring errors are caused by pins overflowing into the next position's start module.
  21. Rack Layout: Fixed minor bug with dragging and dropping effect basket items to racks in the rack layout view, pertaining to multiple universes.
  22. Rack Layout: Fixed 'Reorder pins' bug pertaining to multiple universes.
  23. Rack Layout: Fixed a rack text layout bug in the rack view when module/rack number text shifted to the side wrongly when rack was rotated clockwise 90 degrees and had stacked neighbors above or below it.
  24. Sync with network: Fix bug with 'my effects' sync not working the first time in a session if the user logged in offline.
  25. Sync with network: Fix Finale Inventory sync bug causing the sync process to always think there were changed rows if those rows had quantities in multiple locations.
  26. Sync with network: Fix a bug that could cause the 'Calculate changes' step to spin forever.
  27. DMX: Add new fixture 'Generic Custom DMX Fixture 16CH', Figure ID 208, to make it easier for the user to test a new fixture without needing to define it first with 'Create DMX fixture'. The user can enter any arbitrary list of channel values in the DMX Parameters field of a script row for this fixture, and its DMX Patch will write those values to the exported script.
  28. DMX: Implement effect library for KTV-IP65 A3 Animation Laser 16CH.
  29. DMX: Adjusted intensity of red LED in Sahauhy cheapo par light fixture.
  30. DMX: Fixed duration of 'Reset Fixture' effect for WKL-BEAM02 fixture and changed its VDL from par to spotlight.
  31. Miscellaneous: Add new script table field/column called 'DMX Parameters' to enable the user to enter per-event DMX parameters that the DMX Patch has access to.
  32. Miscellaneous: Change the description field in CSV and XLSX format reports to NOT add the device count in parentheses in front of the effect name.
  33. Miscellaneous: Added scrollbars to dialogs whose content exceeds the height of the window.
  34. Miscellaneous: Fixed annoyance that when user switches between two shows or opens a new show while looking at the rack view window, the filter didn't clear properly, which was confusing.
  35. Miscellaneous: Add alpha-level support for 8k+ rendering.
  36. Language: Update German translation.
  37. Language: Updated Russian UI translation.
  38. Language: Updated Ukrainian UI translation.

finale3d-installer-2024.09.17-b4f1e8168

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Inventory sync: Fix a bug that could cause the 'Calculate changes' step to spin forever.

finale3d-installer-2024.09.16-3a5de5bcf

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Inventory sync: Fix bug with 'my effects' sync not working the first time in a session if the user logged in offline.
  2. Finale Inventory sync: Fix bug causing the sync process to always think there were changed rows if those rows had quantities in multiple locations.
  3. Machine compatibility: Reverted a change introduced in the 2024.07.30-934b8a80f beta release for determining machine locale in an attempt to resolve an issue where Finale 3D doesn't run on certain machines.

finale3d-installer-2024.09.04-86726da1d

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Update German, Russian, and Ukrainian UI translations.
  2. Fixed bug in which the selected locations in 'File > Finale Inventory > Selected locations' appeared to be preserved but weren't actually applied to the shown inventory quantities upon launching the software.
  3. Fixed bug introduced in the last beta that camera animation wasn't included in rendered videos.
  4. Changed description field in FireOne and FireOne CSV export to NOT add the device count number in parentheses in front of the effect name.
  5. Change the description field in CSV and XLSX format reports to NOT add the device count in parentheses in front of the effect name.
  6. Changed Cobra script export description field character limit from 80 to 62 at Cobra's request.
  7. Fixed a minor bug with 'Renumber pins' function when multiple universes are used.
  8. Fixed a rack text layout bug in the rack view when module/rack number text shifted to the side wrongly when rack was rotated clockwise 90 degrees and had stacked neighbors above or below it.
  9. Widened menu items for labels blueprint fields and field styles.
  10. Changed default duration in Pyroneo exported scripts from 500ms to 250ms.
  11. Added scrollbars to dialogs whose content exceeds the height of the window.
  12. Fixed addressing bug wherein 'Module constrained to a single Section' didn't apply to locked addresses in some circumstances.
  13. Added explanation in Cobra exporter that Timecode 1 stops or doesn't stop when the timecode stops, and Timecode 2 is the other way around; the fact that even I can't remember which is evidence the explanation will be useful.
  14. Fixed annoyance that when user switches between two shows or opens a new shows while looking at the rack view window, the filter didn't clear properly, which was confusing.
  15. Fixed rack tube assignment bug wherein pre-wired pin racks with a single row of tubes having a pin pattern defined by user specified list in Custom Rack Field did not work correctly.
  16. Added option to include clock in rendered movie; default is ON; setting is in 'Create movie' dialog.
  17. Changed FireOne CSV export character limit on Product IDs from 12 to 16.
  18. Added instructional error dialog if user addresses a specific position from the racks view, and the position's addresses overflow into rails used by events in other positions. Previously errors were reported as 'Wiring errors' but there was no explanation that the wiring errors were caused by overflowing into rails used by another position.
  19. Fixed minor bug wherein if a user addresses a position from the racks view for a firing system whose modules start at 1, while the show default firing system is set to a firing system whose modules start at 0, and if the user has chosen a starting module/rail in the addressing dialog for this position, then the module numbers would start at that module/rail + 1 instead of that module/rail exactly; the problem would go away after the first time because the show default firing system would get updated to the module type in the addressing dialog.
  20. Added explanation of wiring errors to addressing summary dialog if the wiring errors are caused by pins overflowing into the next position's start module.
  21. Fix missing 32-bit DLLs causing firing system script export failures.
  22. Add alpha-level support for 8k+ rendering.

finale3d-installer-2024.08.13-56bb42b49

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Fix 'invalid gpu' error for some drivers.
  2. Add new script table field/column called 'DMX Parameters' to enable the user to enter per-event DMX parameters that the DMX Patch has access to.
  3. Add new fixture 'Generic Custom DMX Fixture 16CH', Figure ID 208, to make it easier for the user to test a new fixture without needing to define it first with 'Create DMX fixture'. The user can enter any arbitrary list of channel values in the DMX Parameters field of a script row for this fixture, and its DMX Patch will write those values to the exported script.
  4. Update German translation.
  5. Implement effect library for KTV-IP65 A3 Animation Laser 16CH.
  6. Adjusted intensity of red LED in Sahauhy cheapo par light fixture.
  7. Fixed duration of 'Reset Fixture' effect for WKL-BEAM02 fixture and changed its VDL from par to spotlight.
  8. Fixed minor bug with dragging and dropping effect basket items to racks in the rack layout view, pertaining to multiple universes.
  9. Fixed 'Reorder pins' bug pertaining to multiple universes.
  10. Add two more context sensitive yellow box suggestions for sort order in addressing dialog, continuing to put effort into making this dialog self-teaching.
  11. Remove the rack constraint option for Hobbyist Version in addressing dialog since the Hobbyist Version doesn't have the ability to address the show taking into account racks.
  12. Made 'Rearrange effects' checkbox in addressing dialog default to ON.
  13. Added a new labels terms: 'Angle Relative To Single-Shot rack for tilted single-shot racks to give effect labels the option of showing the angle relative to the rack instead of relative to the entire position.

finale3d-installer-2024.08.01-43d2e99fe

FULL RELEASE
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  1. Windows 7 and 8 are officially no longer supported starting in this release; Windows 10 or later is now required.
  2. Addressing: Made significant improvements to the 'Re-arrange effects in adjustable angle racks to avoid collisions' feature with the aim of providing optimal addressing and racking for single shots. The improvements apply to single shot racks with and without pre-wired pins, and even to racks with multiple modules. Coupled with the new addressing sort criteria and constraints, these improvements make it possible to create symmetrical and balanced single-shots rack layouts with perfectly ordered pins (all with a single click). Complex shows with thousands of single shots that previously had to be racked manually can now be racked in minutes instead of hours or days.
  3. Addressing: Added addressing sort criteria 'Size > 55mm -- Single-Shot' and terms for 35, 40, 45, 50 mm. This sort criteria enables filling larger holder single-shot racks with large effects before filling them with smaller effects.
  4. Addressing: Added addressing sort criteria 'Tilt > 50°' and 'Tilt > 50° -- Single-Shot'. These sort criteria are useful for addressing positions that contain multiple sizes of effects, especially single shots, that go into different sizes of single shot racks.
  5. Addressing: Added addressing constraint option 'Rack (If Single-Shot)'. This constraint limits each module serving single shot racks to a one rack while allow modules not serving single shot racks to serve multiple racks.
  6. Addressing: Added addressing constraint option 'Event (If Single-Shot)'. This constraint is useful for limiting pins with single shots to one e-match while allowing pins with other types of effects to have multiple e-matches.
  7. Addressing: Added rack constraint options in addressing dialog Module '(If Rack < 25 Tubes)' and 'Slat (If Rack < 25 Tubes)'. These constraints make it easy to limit racks that have just a few more tubes than the modules or slats to leave their extra tubes empty instead of consuming a second module or slat.
  8. Addressing: Added addressing constrains for racks 'Module (If Single-Shot Rack)' and Slat '(If Single-Shot Rack)'. These constraints limit single-shot racks to a one module, leaving the extra tubes unfilled without limiting non-single-shot racks.
  9. Addressing: Added context sensitive suggestions in the Address Show dialog that recommend sort criteria and constraints based on the contents of the show. For example, recommendations are displayed based on the kind of single-shot racks used. Recommendations are also displayed if the show contains chains to help you select the correct constraint to prevent chains from wrapping from one rack to another.
  10. Addressing: Added descriptions for all the sort criteria and constraints in the Address Show dialog to explain the meaning of each selected term with the goal of simplifying and demystifying the show addressing process.
  11. Addressing: Changed default addressing order to Position Name > Description instead of Position > Event Time.
  12. Racks: Improve the prewired pins feature of racks' half-and-half options and custom options for supporting racks that require two or more modules, ensuring each half, i.e., each number sequence, associates with a single rail, disallowing rails to contribute to both halves, which is an obvious error.
  13. Racks: Add red text warning to rack definition dialog if prewired pins pattern doesn't match the loading order.
  14. Racks: Enhanced the prewired pins half-and-half pattern options to support odd numbers of rows or tubes per row in the rack, which causes half-and-half to split mid-row and requires correct rounding for racks with 35 holders that are split half-and-half to 18 + 17 holder pin sequences.
  15. Racks: Enable users to exclude holders in single-shot racks with prewired pins by giving them out of range prewired pin numbers in the user defined prewired pin sequences in the Custom Part Field or Custom Rack Field, e.g., if you want to rule out an entire row of holders in the middle of the rack, just give them all prewired pin number 99.
  16. Racks: Added a new option on the 'Create rack' dialog to set the 'Standard orientation' of the rack, choosing 'Rows are vertical on screen, like wooden racks' or 'Rows are horizontal on screen, like most single-shot racks'. The standard orientation affects the default orientation of the rack when it is inserted, and also affects the orientation of the pin numbers, module numbers and other text associated with the rack, making it upright in the standard orientation.
  17. Racks: Added pre-wired pin options for half-and-half-mirrored for fan row racks that require two modules, like 6x6 CraigCo racks using 18 pin Cobra modules.
  18. Racks: If drag and drop in racks view from effect basket to occupied holder in rack, kick out previous occupant, and if the rack has pre-wired pins, then also remove previous occupant's firing system address.
  19. Racks: If drag and drop from effect basket to rack with pre-wired pins, and if other pins already in the rack have fixed/chosen the racks module, then assign that module to the dragged effect, not just the first available module.
  20. Racks: If drag and drop from effect basket to rack with pre-wired pins to a holder whose pin is already in use for some other effect, like say a cake, show a reasonable error message with an explanation.
  21. Racks: If drag and drop an effect from one tube to another on a pre-wired pin rack, then change its pin number also if and only if pin not used somewhere else, or report error if pin cannot be assigned
  22. Racks: Extend the red warning text in rack definition dialog's 'Loading order' since loading order is used in more circumstances now in the rearrangement algorithm to avoid pin gaps in for racks with pre-wired pins.
  23. Racks: Improved the 'Add racks' calculation of number of required racks for some scenarios involving single-shot racks with angle constraints on rows' interior holders.
  24. Racks: Improve the 'Add racks' rack allocation algorithm to calculate the required racks taking into account allocating most extreme angles first; this fix makes it unlikely but not impossible for 'Add racks' to overestimate the number of required racks, and of course it remains possible that its estimate may be an underestimate for whatever addressing constraint and sort configuration you decide to use for addressing, which may necessitate more racks.
  25. Racks: Enabled 'Load into racks' function to apply rearrangement to racks that had pre-existing effects in them prior to the loaded effects, working around the pre-existing effects without moving them.
  26. Racks: Made the 'Edit physical specifications' dialog ignore extra characters like 'mm' in fields that are supposed to be simple integers, instead of rejecting the input.
  27. Racks: Added error check and dialog for rack right-click context menu 'Reorder pins' if rack uses pre-wired pins.
  28. Racks: Added a 'Reorder pins' item in the menu that is displayed when right-clicking on a rack with eight options for reordering pins left to right and top to bottom.
  29. Rack Layout & Diagrams: Augmented rendering of SS/cake racks with tiltable rows or with adjustable fan angles of tubes within rows by drawing the knobs on the ends of the rods around which the tubes rotate, to indicate the degree of freedom of rotation visually in the diagram.
  30. Rack Layout & Diagrams: Improve the dynamic red pin error highlighting in rack layout view to take into account a rail illegally contributing to both halves of a half-and-half prewired pin sequence.
  31. Rack Layout & Diagrams: In the rack layout view, made the module numbers, rack numbers, and angle numbers appear on the right side of the rack instead of the top/bottom if otherwise they would overlap other racks above or below as seen on the screen. The repositioning is automatic.
  32. Rack Layout & Diagrams: Changed EASYRACK cake racks to accommodate any angle effect, to avoid the problem of appearing sideways in the rack layout view to accommodate angles of some effects.
  33. Rack Layout & Diagrams: Added option in rack diagram blueprints to 'Show tube angle colors', to make the color gradient colors shown in rack layout view available in the diagrams.
  34. Rack Layout & Diagrams: Fixed minor bug in rack layout automatic text shifting to side of rack, pertaining to very small racks.
  35. Rack Layout & Diagrams: Improved the text colors of rack modules and pins to make them easier to differentiate.
  36. Rack Layout & Diagrams: Added 'Align > Left edge / Right edge / Top edge / bottom edge' functions to the right button context menu clicking on racks, to align the racks.
  37. Rack Layout & Diagrams: Improved dimensions of module graphic in rack layout view for custom modules of StarFire, Merlin, and Pyromate, which previously were too tall and skinny.
  38. Rack Layout & Diagrams: Augmented the rack graphic for pre-wired pin racks in the rack layout view, making it easy to tell if the rack has pre-wired pins or not.
  39. Site & Rack Layout Diagrams: Fixed the bug in printed diagrams that would calculate page size based on bounding rectangle of drawings but didn't take into consideration the Diagram Tag Filters which may have made some of those drawings invisible if the user has multiple site or rack layout diagram variations for different purposes in a print batch.
  40. Site Layout & Diagrams: In site layout diagrams, made sections consisting of a single position draw only the section name but not the bounding box, to remove visual clutter in the diagram.
  41. Reports: Fixed a bug preventing conditional expressions in report blueprints from doing math on the script field called 'Next'.
  42. Labels: Added support for label format Avery 99x42-R A4 size paper.
  43. Blueprints: Fixed some issues with saving blueprints and added a test to prevent users from saving over the standard blueprints, which is bad because updating the software will blow away any user changes to standard blueprints.
  44. Effects: Fix some effects to have soft break sounds: Falling Leaves, and Ear.
  45. Effects: Add soft break sound to Crossette breaks.
  46. Effects: Fix Crackling Pistils.
  47. Effects: Fix bugs with 'Report' and 'Titanium Report'.
  48. Effects: Add Quarter1, Quarter2, Quarter3, and Quarter4 break patterns.
  49. Effects: Remove extra sound node from crackling pistils.
  50. Effects: Add 'no simulation' VDL term.
  51. Effects: Remove break flash and break smoke from pistil breaks.
  52. Effects: Fix a bug causing long-duration fireballs to 'go crazy'.
  53. Effects: Made the confirmation dialog that comes up after editing the VDL of an effect optional, with a do-not-show-again checkbox.
  54. Effect Editor: Change the layout so that the parameter widgets are always visible.
  55. Effect Editor: Fix a bug causing the effect editor to be slower than it was previously.
  56. Firing System: Add support for importing and exportin FireOne FIR and SEM files with 3-digit module numbers.
  57. Firing System: Added error checking for Cobra's v7.1 track labels to ensure user can't enter any disallowed characters.
  58. Firing System: Added 'Track Identifier' as a new column in the Jingduan firing system export.
  59. Firing System: Added Cobra 6M module.
  60. Firing System: Improved effect name truncation function for exported firing system scripts to ensure that description gets truncated instead of position name annotation for firing systems that combine description and position in the same field.
  61. Firing System: Improvements to Piroshow exporter to support DMX BOX hardware, and event times greater than one hour, and optionally filtering the exported script to a specific DMX universe.
  62. Firing System: Removed the 'None' options for trigger channel and return channel for Cobra, since they are no longer supported by Cobra in most recent firmware.
  63. Firing System: Added support for sequence names in the Pyroneo script exporter. In Finale, the track name should include first the track number starting with 1, followed by the sequence name, as in '01 FIRST SEQUENCE'.
  64. Firing System: Changed the graphical representation of the fireTEK slats in the racks view to be horizontal instead of vertical so they can be larger.
  65. Firing System: Fixed export crash bug if exporting Pyrodigital PDM containing rows with blank addresses and ignoring the warning dialog.
  66. DMX: Added support for Spark Fabrica fixtures SF-180 Tornado, SF-90 I Flamer Plus, SF-05 Spark Jet Pro, SF-KP Kungfupau, SF-F5 Formula Flamer, SF-Z5 Fly Spark, SF-X2 Spark Spin, SF-X8 Spark Titan, and SF-01 Spark Rain Pro. The SF-180 Tornado is the same as the existing Spark Fabrica Moving Head fixture.
  67. DMX: Fixed minor bug that hold-forever DMX durations in exported FireOne CSV format files were blank instead of 0
  68. DMX: Fixed bug with back-to-back pre-defined program effects for Explo, Showven and Spark Fabrica wave flamer fixtures. Previously a gap between effects was required in order to set ignition to OFF before setting it ON again to retrigger the program, and now a gap is no longer required because Finale automatically turns the ignition OFF 100 ms prior to the start of an effect even if the event is following another back-to-back.
  69. DMX: Added DMX fixture definitions for ML-B080 moving head, ML-B150 moving head, WKL-BEAM02 pinspot spotlight, and KTV-IP65 laser.
  70. DMX: Added DMX fixture definition for WKL-BEAM02 12W RGBW Pinspot Spotlight 6CH.
  71. Drones: Fixed the problem that large VVIZ files imported into Finale might not be savable if their motion data exceeded the character limit of the table cells in the positions table. Finale now compresses the motion and effect data of VVIZ files during the import process, guaranteeing that that file will import successfully and will be savable. This fix now means that drone designers do not need to worry about the frame rate of the exported VVIZ files. All frame rates work, even 24 fps, though usually there isn't much reason to export at higher frame rates that 4 fps. Higher frame rates result in larger files and slower import times.
  72. Drones: Added base64 compression to Motion Data in the Positions window to increase the length of drone shows possible without visual artifacts to about 48 minutes.
  73. Drones: Added option when importing to merge or replace existing drones, enabling the user to combine multiple drone show segments in Finale at chosen offset times.
  74. Drones: Added heading the VVIZ file format definition, as described in the VVIZ programmer notes in the software documentation on the website.
  75. Drones: Added option to preserve existing drone pyro payloads when importing an updated drone vviz file.
  76. Drones: Also added rail, pin, notes, pan, and tilt optional attributes to the pyro payloads in VVIZ files, enabling designers to specify effect angles and triggering information outside of Finale and import them into Finale in the VVIZ file.
  77. Drones: Added a sample at time 0 for VVIZ import to ensure the orientation and position begin at the home orientation and position from the VVIZ file at exactly zero instead of at the first-time delta.
  78. Graphics: Change the way Finale 3D does OpenGL initialization to fix an 'invalid GPU' detection bug for some NVIDIA GPUs.
  79. Graphics: Fix a new crash that could occur when rendering on low-end GPUs such as Intel.
  80. Google Maps: Fixed bug where the dialog was not restoring the per-show-settings when the dialog was cancelled by closing the window.
  81. 3D Models: Updated SketchUp SDK to SDK_WIN_x64_2024-0-553.
  82. Sync with network: Fix a bug causing large inventories to take especially long to sync to network.
  83. Miscellaneous: Upgrades to several internal dependencies, and the compiler we use to build Finale 3D.
  84. Miscellaneous: Upgrade internal version of Chromium.
  85. Miscellaneous: Include missing DLL nvcuda.dll in installer.
  86. Miscellaneous: Fix a crash bug loading large files, such as audio files.
  87. Miscellaneous: Fix a bug causing a crash when some dialogs pop up.
  88. Miscellaneous: Fixed bug in 'Addressing > Troubleshooting > Select events with multiple event times/etc.' which prevented the function from selecting the offending rows in the script after reporting the error message for Pyrodigital and FireOne exports. The bug had been reproduced with the new timecode features early 2024.
  89. Miscellaneous: Improve the title and size of email verification dialog when creating an account.
  90. Miscellaneous: Eliminate brief 'flash' of incorrect title/content in dialogs.
  91. Miscellaneous: When a modal dialog is open, clicking on another window will bring the main window and modal window to the front, to prevent confusing situations in which the modal dialog is behind another window that isn't fully functional while the modal dialog is open.
  92. Miscellaneous: Added Effect Data and Random Seed columns to exported Finale Generic CSV files for companies integrating with Finale 3D.
  93. Miscellaneous: Made the 'Delete song/songs' function delete all songs if none are selected.
  94. Miscellaneous: Added 'E-matches' column to script window, with values copied from the 'E-matches Default' field of the effect definitions in the effects window.
  95. Miscellaneous: Added new submenu 'Effects > Update script fields from effect defaults...' with options to update Rack Type, E-Matches, Delay, and Hazard.
  96. Language: Updated Russian UI translation.
  97. Language: Updated Spanish UI translation.
  98. Language: Updated Ukrainian UI translation.

finale3d-installer-2024.07.30-934b8a80f

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Updated Spanish UI translation.
  2. Made addressing dialog rearrangement function list modules in two-module racks lowest first even when modules are shared with other racks.
  3. Fixed addressing dialog rearrangement bug that applied when multiple effects/e-matches used same pin within single-shot rack.
  4. Removed 'Rack Number' from triggering yellow suggestion box in addressing dialog.
  5. Made 'Rack Custom Field' suppress the 'To prevent sharing modules...' suggestion in addressing dialog.
  6. Added error check and dialog for rack right-click context menu 'Reorder pins' if rack uses pre-wired pins.
  7. Changed rack right-click context menu 'Renumber pins' to 'Reorder pins' and made it a submenu with eight directions, LRTB, RLTB, etc.
  8. Improved addressing dialog rearrangement function pin order and effect layout for non-pre-wired pin racks; a significant improvement.
  9. Improved styling of addressing dialog, especially the term definitions and suggestions.
  10. Added new rack constraint options in addressing dialog: 'Module (If Rack < 25 Tubes)' and 'Slat (If Rack < 25 Tubes)'. These options make it easy to limit racks that have just a few more tubes than the modules or slats to leave their extra tubes empty instead of consuming a second module or slat.
  11. Added DMX fixture definitions for ML-B080 moving head, ML-B150 moving head, WKL-BEAM02 pinspot spotlight, and KTV-IP65 laser.
  12. Added addressing dialog rack constraings 'Module (If Single-Shot Rack)' and 'Slat (If Single-Shot Rack)' to limit single-shot racks that have a few more tubes than the modules have pins, like 35 tubes for 32 pin module, to a single module, leaving the extra tubes unfilled; without limiting non-single-shot racks.
  13. Added DMX fixture definition for WKL-BEAM02 12W RGBW Pinspot Spotlight 6CH.

finale3d-installer-2024.07.16-5cc841cc4

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Improved dimensions of module graphic in rack layout view for custom modules of StarFire, Merlin, and Pyromate, which previously were too tall and skinny.
  2. Augmented the rack graphic for pre-wired pin racks in the rack layout view, making it easy to tell if the rack has pre-wired pins or not.
  3. Added text formatting -- paragraphs and bold/italic -- to the info/warning boxes on the addressing dialog.
  4. Made the 'Edit physical specifications' dialog ignore extra characters like 'mm' in fields that are supposed to be simple integers, instead of rejecting the input.
  5. Changed appearance of rack tubes in pre-wired racks to rings instead of filled circles.
  6. Changed formatting of addressing dialog info/warning boxes slightly, removing single-quotes.

finale3d-installer-2024.07.09-092f27543

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Include missing DLL nvcuda.dll in installer.
  2. Improve error checking on the 'beginning with module number' field of the addressing dialog.
  3. Changed default addressing sort criteria to POSITION > DESCRIPTION instead of POSITION > EVENT TIME.
  4. Improved the 'Add racks' calculation of number of required racks for some scenarios involving single-shot racks with angle constraints on rows' interior holders.
  5. Improve the rearrange effects function for SS racks with prewired pins and two modules with mirrored pin sequences by filling from both sides always if more than half the tube holders are occupied, even when all tubes are straight up.
  6. Added context sensitive yellow box tooltips to addressing dialog when user selects sort terms in an order that doesn't work, such as 'Position --> Description --> Size > 50MM' which should be 'Position --> Size > 50MM --> Description' to make the Description the tie breaker within groups of large and small effects.
  7. Restrict the rearrange effects function to not apply to cake racks; and enable the function when applying to prewired pin racks to change pins of effects in other racks that share modules wiht the rack whose effects are being rearranged in order to prevent gaps in the used pin sequence of the rack being rearranged.
  8. Improve the 'Add racks' rack allocation algorithm to calculate the required racks taking into account allocating most extreme angles first; this fix makes it unlikely but not impossible for 'Add racks' to overestimate the number of required racks, and of course it remains possible that its estimate may be an underestimate for whatever addressing constraint and sort configuration you decide to use for addressing, which may necessitate more racks.
  9. Make rearrange provide left/right symmetry for angles, with most extreme angles in topleft and topright, in racks with single modules or with two non-mirrored modules, the same as it already does for racks with two mirrored modules.
  10. Enabled 'Load into racks' function to apply rearrangement to racks that had pre-existing effects in them prior to the loaded effects, working around hte pre-existing effects without moving them.
  11. Enable the global rearrange function to apply to racks containing some locked effects, by working around them without moving them.

finale3d-installer-2024.07.04-526719120

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Change the way Finale 3D does OpenGL initialization, to more thoroughly fix the 'invalid GPU' detection bug.

finale3d-installer-2024.07.01-9317cbb31

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Attempt to fix bug causing NVIDIA GPUs to not be recognized by Finale3D.
  2. Added context sensitive instructions on the addressing dialog that explain what sort and constraint terms to use based on content of the show, such as what kind of single-shot racks the show uses, and whether it has chains.
  3. Increased font size of tooltip/warning boxes in addressing dialog.
  4. Changed the graphical representation of the fireTEK slats in the racks view to be horizontal instead of vertical so they can be larger.
  5. Changed the addressing sort terms that are size thresholds from greater-than-equal to strictly greater than, e.g., Size > 50MM.
  6. Added an additional addressing warning box test for whether the user has size threshold sort terms in the wrong order, after numerical sorts like Angle or Tilt.
  7. Fixed bug in the fallback scenario of rearranging tubes in racks per row instead of globally. The bug was introduced after the last full release.
  8. Fixed some issues with saving blueprints and added a test to prevent users from saving over the standard blueprints, which is bad because updating the software will blow away any user changes to standard blueprints.
  9. Added 'E-matches' column to script window, with values copied from the 'E-matches Default' field of the effect definitions in the effects window.
  10. Added new submenu 'Effects > Update script fields from effect defaults...' with options to update Rack Type, E-Matches, Delay, and Hazard.
  11. Network sync: Fix a bug causing large inventories to take especially long to sync to network.

finale3d-installer-2024.06.26-c46acf419

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Eliminate brief 'flash' of incorrect title/content in dialogs.
  2. Effects: Remove break flash and break smoke from pistil breaks.
  3. Added tooltip hints for all the sort terms and all the constraint terms in the addressing dialog.
  4. Effect Editor: Fix a bug causing the effect editor to be slower than it previously was.

finale3d-installer-2024.06.21-3f686d86a

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Effects: Add Quarter1, Quarter2, Quarter3, and Quarter4 break patterns.
  2. Effects: Add soft break sound to crossette breaks.
  3. Effects: Remove extra sound node from crackling pistils.
  4. Effects: Add 'no simulation' VDL term.
  5. Fix title and size of email verification dialog.
  6. RACKS: Fixed bug in which racks would be inserted sideways unnecessarily.
  7. RACKS: Added pre-wired pin options for half-and-half-mirrored for fan row racks that require two modules, like 6x6 CraigCo racks using 18 pin Cobra modules.
  8. RACKS: Improved the 'Rearrange effects in single-shot racks' algorithm to avoid pin sequence gaps.
  9. RACKS: If all events are straight up, rearrange now loads from one side instead of from both sides.
  10. RACKS: If some positive angles, some negative angles, and not pre-wired pins, then spread out angles to the ends symmetrically to avoid needing to adjust unused holders to avoid collisions.
  11. If some positive, some negative, and using pre-wired pins, try to spread out to ends symmetrically but compress to one side or the other if symmetry would require an extra module in a two-module rack scenario.
  12. RACKS: When rearranging effects in racks with odd numbers of tubes, allocate the middle column mirrored around its center to avoid gaps.
  13. RACKS: Rearrange automatically swaps modules in two-module racks when necessary to ensure lower numbered module is on the left.
  14. RACKS: If drag and drop in racks view from effect basket to occupied holder in rack, kick out previous occupant, and if the rack has pre-wired pins, then also remove previous occupant's firing system address.
  15. RACKS: If drag and drop from effect basket to rack with pre-wired pins, and if other pins already in the rack have fixed/chosen the racks module, then assign that module to the dragged effect, not just the first available module.
  16. RACKS: If drag and drop from effect basket to rack with pre-wired pins to a holder whose pin is already in use for some other effect, like say a cake, show a reasonable error message with an explanation.
  17. RACKS: If drag and drop an effect from one tube to another on a pre-wired pin rack, then change its pin number also if and only if pin not used somewhere else, or report error if pin cannot be assigned
  18. RACKS: Extend the red warning text in rack definition dialog's 'Loading order' since loading order is used in more circumstances now in the rearrangement algorithm to avoid pin gaps in for racks with pre-wired pins.

finale3d-installer-2024.06.14-4b3f00f5d

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Added support for label format Avery 99x42-R A4 size paper.
  2. Fix a bug causing a crash when some dialogs pop up.
  3. DRONE SHOWS: Added base64 compression to Motion Data in the Positions window to increase the length of drone shows possible without visual artifacts to about 48 minutes.
  4. Improvements to Piroshow exporter to support DMX BOX hardware, and event times greater than one hour, and optionally filtering the exported script to a specific DMX universe.
  5. DRONES: Added a sample at time 0 for VVIZ import to ensure the orientation and position begin at the home orientation and position from the VVIZ file at exactly zero instead of at the first time delta.
  6. Added Effect Data and Random Seed columns to exported Finale Generic CSV files for amusement park companies integrating with Finale 3D.
  7. Removed the 'None' options for trigger channel and return channel for Cobra, since they are no longer supported by Cobra in most recent firmware.
  8. VDL: Fix some effects to have soft break sounds: Falling Leaves, Ear, and Crossete star breaks.
  9. Added support for sequence names in the Pyroneo script exporter. In Finale, the track name should include first the track number starting with 1, followed by the sequence name, as in '01 FIRST SEQUENCE'.
  10. DRONES: Added option when importing to merge or replace existing drones, enabling the user to combine multiple drone show segments in Finale at chosen offset times.
  11. Made the confirmation dialog that comes up after editing the VDL of an effect optional, with a do-not-show-again checkbox.
  12. Made the 'Delete song/songs' function delete all songs if none are selected.
  13. VDL: Fix bugs with 'report' and 'titanium report'.
  14. VDL: Fix crackling pistils.
  15. When a modal dialog is open, clicking on another window will bring the main window and modal window to the front, to prevent confusing situations in which the modal dialog is behind another window that isn't fully functional while the modal dialog is open.
  16. Effect Editor: Change the layout so that the parameter widgets are always visible.

finale3d-installer-2024.06.05-418b27d02

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Windows 7 and 8 are officially no longer supported starting in this release; Windows 10 or later is now required.
  2. Updgrades to several internal dependencies, and the compiler we use to build Finale3D.
  3. Upgrade internal version of Chromium.
  4. SketchUp model loading: updated SketchUp SDK to SDK_WIN_x64_2024-0-553.
  5. Fix bug: a crash bug loading large files, such as audio files.
  6. Augmented rendering of SS/cake racks with tiltable rows or with adjustable fan angles of tubes within rows by drawing the knobs on the ends of the rods around which the tubes rotate, to indicate the degree of freedom of rotation visually in the diagram.
  7. In site layout diagrams, made sections consisting of a single position draw only the section name but not the bounding box, to remove visual clutter in the diagram.
  8. Added new addressing constraint option for module/slat/pins: 'RACK -- SINGLE-SHOT' to restrict modules a single rack for single-shots without applying the restriction to other kinds of racks.)WIP on supporting CraigCo racks with multiple modules per rack
  9. Fixed addressing sort terms 'Tilt -- Single-Shot' and 'Most Horizontal Tilt -- Single-Shot', and the same terms for other types of effects, making them sort non-matching type items last instead of treating non-matching type items as having zero angles.
  10. Added sort criteria 'Size >= 50MM -- Single-Shot' and other terms for 35, 40, 45, 50, and 55MM to facilitate filling larger holder single-shot racks with large effects before using them up their precious larger holders with smaller effects.
  11. Improve the prewired pins feature of racks' half-and-half options and custom options for supporting racks that require two or more modules, ensuring each half, i.e, each number sequence, associates with a single rail, disallowing rails to contribute to both halves, which is an obvious error.
  12. Add red text warning to rack definition dialog if prewired pins pattern doesn't match the loading order.
  13. Enhanced the prewired pins half-and-half pattern options to support odd numbers of rows or tubes per row in the rack, which causes half-and-half to split mid-row and requires correct rounding for racks with 35 holders that are split half-and-half to 18 + 17 holder pin sequences.
  14. Improve the dynamic red pin error highlighting in rack layout view to take into account a rail illegally contributing to both halves of a half-and-half prewired pin sequence.
  15. Made the rearrange tubes to avoid collisions function's fallback algorithm that operates on rows individually support racks with prewired pins for multiple modules, for which rearrangement may require the algorithm to swap events between modules, not just pins.
  16. Added support for Spark Fabrica fixtures SF-180 Tornado, SF-90 I Flamer Plus, SF-05 Spark Jet Pro, SF-KP Kungfupau, and SF-F5 Formula Flamer. The SF-180 Tornado is the same as the existing Spark Fabrica Moving Head fixture.
  17. Fixed a bug with the new 'One Single-Shot Rack' constraint option in the addressing dialog.
  18. Made tube rearrangement fill from the sides inward instead of left justified even in cases where all effect angles are the same.
  19. When rearranging effects in racks with prewired pins, do per-row rearrangement instead of global rearrangement if holes in ideal pin sequence resulting from pins shared with other racks exceeds one hole per five filled holders, because when there are more than 20% holes in the sequence, the swiss cheese sequence from global rearrangement looks worse than the per-row rearrangement.
  20. Enable users to exclude holders in single-shot racks with prewired pins by giving them out of range prewired pin numbers in the user defined prewired pin sequences in the Custom Part Field or Custom Rack Field, e.g., if you want to rule out an entire row of holders in the middle of the rack, just give them all prewired pin number 99.
  21. If rack contains effects that have pins that have multilpe ematches, in teh same rack or other racks or locked effects without racks, and if rack has prewired pins, then rearrangement will be disabled to avoid creating pins with multiple event times.
  22. Added a new addressing constraint option 'Event -- If Single-Shot' which is useful to apply to the pins constraint option in the addressing dialog if you want to restrict pins to a single ematch for single-shot effects while having a different, larger number of max ematches for pins for other types of effects.
  23. Fixed minor bug that hold-forever DMX durations in exported FireOne CSV format files were blank instead of 0
  24. Support importing FireOne FIR and SEM files with 3-digit module addresses.
  25. Support exporting FireOne FIR and SEM files with 3-digit module addresses.
  26. Take into consideration the rack instance context menu function 'Reverse tube loading order' for all the constraint checking and module number sorting pertaining to multiple modules in the same rack that depend on the order of occurrence of the modules' pins in the rack when traversing the rack tubes/holders in loading order.
  27. Widened addressing dialog constraintmenus when they are popped up, since the item text was getting clipped.
  28. Added a new option on the 'Create rack' dialog to set the 'Standard orientation' of the rack, choosing 'Rows are vertical on screen, like wooden racks' or 'Rows are horizontal on screen, like most single-shot racks'. The standard orientation affects the default orientation of the rack when it is inserted, and also affects the orientation of the pin numbers, module numbers and other text associated with the rack, making it upright in the standard orientation.
  29. In the rack layout view, made the module numbers, rack numbers, and angle numbers appear on the right side of the rack instead of the top/bottom if otherwise they would overlap other racks above or below as seen on the screen. The repositioning is automatic.
  30. Changed EASYRACK cake racks to accommodate any angle effect, to avoid the problem of appearing sideways in the rack layout view to accommodate angles of some effects.
  31. Drones: Fixed the problem that large VVIZ files imported into Finale might not be savable if their motion data exceeded the character limit of the table cells in the positions table. Finale now compresses the motion and effect data of VVIZ files during the import process, guaranteeing that that file will import successfully and will be savable. This fix now means that drone designers do not need to worry about the frame rate of the exported VVIZ files. All frame rates work, even 24 fps, though usually there isn't much reason to export at higher frame rates that 4 fps. Higher frame rates result in larger files and slower import times.
  32. Drones: Added heading the VVIZ file format definition, as described in the VVIZ programmer notes in the software documentation on the website.
  33. Drones: Also added rail, pin, notes, pan, and tilt optional attributes to the pyro payloads in VVIZ files, enabling designers to specify effect angles and triggering information outside of Finale and import them into Finale in the VVIZ file.
  34. Fixed the address position dialog checkbox of 'Use values from default addressing blueprint', which previously worked in a way that appeared flaky.
  35. Added option in rack diagram blueprints to 'Show tube angle colors', to make the color gradient colors shown in rack layout view available in the diagrams.
  36. Added support for new fixtures Spark Fabrica SF-Z5 Fly Spark, SF-X2 Spark Spin, SF-X8 Spark Titan, and SF-01 Spark Rain Pro.
  37. Fixed export crash bug if exporting Pyrodigital PDM containing rows with blank addresses and ignoring the warning dialog.
  38. Added error checking for Cobra's v7.1 track labels to ensure user can't enter any disallowed characters.
  39. Fixed the bug in printed diagrams that would calculate page size based on bounding rect of drawings but didn't take into consideration the Diagram Tag Filters which may have made some of those drawings invisible if the user has multiple site or rack layout diagram variations for different purposes in a print batch.
  40. Fixed bug in 'Addressing > Troubleshooting > Select events with multiple event times/etc.' which prevented the function from selecting the offending rows in the script after reporting the error message for Pyrodigital and FireOne exports. The bug had been reproduced with the new timecode features early 2024.
  41. DMX: Fixed bug with back-to-back pre-defined program effects for Explo, Showven and Spark Fabrica wave flamer fixtures. Previously a gap between effects was required in order to set ignition to OFF before setting it ON again to retrigger the program, and now a gap is no longer required because Finale automatically turns the ignition OFF 100 ms prior to the start of an effect even if the even is following another back to back.
  42. Added 'Track Identifier' as a new column in the Jingduan firing system export.
  43. Drones: Added option to preserve existing drone pyro payloads when importing an updated drone vviz file.
  44. Fix a new crash that could occur when rendering on low-end GPUs such as Intel.
  45. Effect compiler: Fix a bug causing long-duration fireballs to 'go crazy'.
  46. Added option to preserve existing drone pyro payloads when importing an updated drone vviz file.
  47. Added Cobra 6M module.
  48. Improved effect name truncation function for exported firing system scripts to ensure that description gets truncationed instead of position name annotation for firing systems that combine description and position in the same field.
  49. Fixed minor bug in rack layout automatic text shifting to side of rack, pertaining to very small racks.
  50. Added four new addressing sort criteria: 'Tilt > 50 degrees' 'Tilt > 53 degrees' 'Tilt > 50 degrees -- single-shot' and 'Tilt > 53 degrees -- single-shot'.
  51. Google Maps: Fixed bug where the dialog was not restoring the per-show-settings when the dialog was cancelled by closing the window.
  52. Update Russian and Ukrainian UI translations.
  53. Fixed a bug preventing conditional expressions in report blueprints from doing math on the script field called 'Next'.
  54. Improved the text colors of rack modules and pins to make them easier to differentiate.
  55. Added 'Align > Left edge / Right edge / Top edge / bottom edge' functions to the right button context menu clicking on racks, to align the racks.

finale3d-installer-2024.05.18-6de3ba488

FULL RELEASE
Download

  1. 3D Google Maps: Major upgrade to Google Maps support with the addition of 3D Google Maps. To access the new Google Maps dialog, go to the Scenery menu and select Ground images > Set ground to Google map. The new Google Maps functionality provides a real-time preview of 2D Google Maps images and two customizable regions of 3D Google Maps models. The new dialog also includes adjustable settings for map height, 3D model brightness and terrain brightness.
  2. 3D Model Support: Added support for the glTF (GLB) 3D model format. GLB models are available from resources like Sketchfab or can be created using 3D modeling applications like Blender.
  3. Rack Dimensions: Added the ability to specify the length, width, spacing, and color for racks. This makes it possible to create accurately scaled racks and rack layouts which is especially useful for shoot sites with space limitations, such as floating platforms, barges and rooftops. For instructions, see the Rack dimensions and other physical specifications documentation.
  4. Print Batch: Added new 'Print Batch' feature that simultaneously generates a set PDF documents for a show. This saves considerable time by eliminating the need to generate each PDF one by one. The collection (i.e., batch) of PDFs can include reports, labels, diagrams, site layouts, and charts. Even more time can be saved by predefining the filename and directory paths for each document in a batch. For instructions, see the Print batch documentation.
  5. Print Batch: Added 'Default Pathname' field in blueprints for reports, charts, diagrams, and labels. Also added support for variables in the Default Pathnames field for blueprints, enabling blueprints to create default pathnames and filenames using information about the show. For instructions, see the Default pathnames documentation.
  6. Sound Level Charts: Added the ability to generate sound level charts showing the expected instantaneous (LAmax) and average (LAeq) sound levels over the course of a show. Also added functionality to allow site layout diagrams to indicate maximum sound levels expected at designated locations, such as nearby residences or audience locations. To learn more, visit Sound level charts basic instructions.
  7. Timecode: Added FSK exporters for Pyrodigital, Pyromate, FireOne, and StarFire, in the 'File > Export > Export soundtrack...'. To learn more, visit the FSK timecode documentation.
  8. Timecode: Added negative FSK timecode option for FireOne and StarFire exporters. To learn more, visit the Negative timecode documentation.
  9. Timecode: Added 'File > Tools > Analyze timecode in soundtrack file...' that reads all variations of FSK and all variations of SMPTE, and displays a summary of all timecode frames in the file, the alignment, the number of jumps, and bad/error frames, with the option of exporting all timecode data contained in the soundtrack file as a human readable log. To learn more, visit the Analyze timecode in soundtrack file documentation.
  10. Timecode: Added a rise-time filter for SMPTE that preserves the square wave more than a strong low pass filter.
  11. Timecode: Improved 'Add song...' and 'Align song to timecode' to handle concert soundtracks with multiple timecode sections for various SMPTE hours stored back-to-back or with small gaps in the soundtrack WAV file. Add/align song now automatically splits up the song according to its timecode sections and aligns the sections independently on the timeline.
  12. Timecode: Improve the 'Add song' function when importing soundtracks with multiple timecode sections by identifying the exact start times of the timecode sections instead of taking a few frames to lock on to the timecode sections, as the real-time SMPTE tracking requires to avoid spurious jumps.
  13. Timecode: Improve the 'Add song' function for importing soundtracks with multiple timecode sections by importing the sections on the timeline at their literal HHMMSSFF timecode times instead of the real-world interpretations of those times, which doesn't work well for SMPTE 29.97 NDF timecode.
  14. Timecode: Add a warning when setting the show's effect time format to SMPTE 29.97 NDF while having multiple timecode sections in the show, since SMPTE 29.97 NDF does not work for most workflows involving multiple timecode sections on the timeline.
  15. Timecode: Improve the 'Add song' function for aligning a soundtrack containing only a single timecode section, similar to the multi-timecode section improvement, to address the issues with supporting SMPTE 29.97 NDF timecode.
  16. Timecode: Fixed/improved SMPTE 'Analyze timecode in soundtrack file' function and the automatic alignment and/or splitting up functions for adding soundtracks to the show that contain timecode or timecode sections. Previously the interpreted timecode frame rates for SMPTE miscalculated if the soundtrack file had many missing/bad timecode frames in the file, which occurred most frequently with timecode stored in MP3 files. This problem is now fixed, and the frame rate calculation is robust even if there are missing frames.
  17. Timecode: Added 'SMPTE Start/End/Format' to songs table.
  18. Timecode: Added new report blueprint 'Reports > Special reports > SMPTE Song List'. For more details, see the 'SMPTE song list report' section in the Concert soundtracks documentation.
  19. Rack Layout & Diagrams: Fix the site/rack layout diagram options for specifying the size of the info panel and legend
  20. Rack Layout & Diagrams: Made rack annotations, rail numbers, calibers, angles a constant font size, instead of varying based on rack caliber.
  21. Rack Layout & Diagrams: Improved font size scaling for tubes and cakes in rack diagrams to better accommodate very tight user-defined rack dimensions.
  22. Rack Layout & Diagrams: Added the ability to snap racks together on top and bottom in addition to side-by-side.
  23. Rack Layout & Diagrams: Added colorful visualization of rack clusters when dragging racks in rack layout view.
  24. Rack Layout & Diagrams: Changed rack cluster calculation to take into account rack dimensions. The new rack cluster visualization enables you to see at a glance if the change affects an existing show.
  25. Rack Layout & Diagrams: Added color gradient visualization of tube angles and a corresponding legend in rack layout view whenever user is in 'Drag and drop pins' mode. The colors of the tubes range from cool aiming left to warm colors aiming right, making it easy to see if you have any colliding tube angles in single shot racks.
  26. Rack Layout & Diagrams: Changed the automatic annotations added by the 'Add racks for show' function to be the rack descriptions rather than the rack part numbers.
  27. Rack Layout & Diagrams: Made the 'Add racks for show' function add automatic annotations for cake racks in addition to the other single shot and mortar racks. Previously cake racks didn't get annotations.
  28. Rack Layout & Diagrams: Added automatic dimension rulers to rack cluster visualizations.
  29. Rack Layout & Diagrams: Added option in rack layout blueprints to show/highlight the rack clusters.
  30. Rack Layout & Diagrams: Increased the resolution of the rulers in the rack and site layout views when distances are less than 10m.
  31. Rack Layout & Diagrams: Fixed the text positioning in horizontal rulers in rack/site layouts, which previously intersected the line.
  32. Rack Layout & Diagrams: Changed 'Racks > Rack window settings > Enable background image in rack layout view' to default to false.
  33. Rack Layout & Diagrams: Added 'Show rack cluster rulers' as a separate checkbox on the rack layout blueprint configuration page.
  34. Rack Layout & Diagrams: Draw cluster ruler lines in white and with white background for text if rack layout has a dark background image.
  35. Rack Layout & Diagrams: Made rack cluster annotations constant size, even for very small racks.
  36. Labels: Improved the label format option 'Fancy Angle Colors', show the angle as BLUE and the angle value as 180° when a cakes is rotated. Red = house right, Green = house left, Blue = straight-up and rotated 180°, Black = other. For details, see the Labels basic instructions documentation.
  37. Labels: Added a Custom Blueprint Field to blueprints, which can contain static text to appear in labels. The Custom Blueprint Field can be set in the dialog for creating or editing labels. Having set the Custom Blueprint Field's text, you can choose Custom Blueprint Field as a content box in the labels. One use for static text in labels is to add an explicit field name, like 'Module' or 'DMX Channel Base:' to explain the meaning of the number on the label.
  38. Labels: Added new content fields for labels for printing DMX fixture labels. The new fields are: DMX Channel Base, DMX Channel Range, DMX Universe, DMX Fixture Name, DMX Fixture Nickname, DMX Fixture Angle. For details, see the Labels basic instructions documentation.
  39. Labels: Added a new label format Avery 3651 A4 which is the same as the Chinese format C3053.
  40. Labels: Retuned the labels option that adjusts the positions of labels on the page to pull them away from the edges of label page formats that do not have borders between the labels and the edges of the page to accommodate printers that don't print all the way to the edges of the page. The retuning prevents the adjustment from positioning labels flush against the border between labels on the interior of the page, which can also be a source of problems if pages aren't aligned in the printer perfectly.
  41. Firing System: Add option in Pyrodigital exporter for setting the time base to SMPTE 29.97 NDF, enabling the exported PDM script to remain in sync with 29.97 NDF timecode if that is what is driving the controller. Without this setting, 29.97 NDF timecode drives the controller to play the script slightly too slowly, accumulating to 1.2 seconds late on a 20-minute show. This issue only pertains to 29.97 NDF timecode.
  42. Firing System: Add a red text warning in the Pyrodigital exporter if the user chooses SMPTE 29.97 NDF time base while having multiple timecode sections, because the 29.97 NDF time base does not align with real-world time, which is incorrect for most workflows involving multiple timecode sections in the same show.
  43. Firing System: In the Pyrodigital exporter, if the user is exporting a script with a script export offset, then add a red text hint next to the time base field showing what the script export offset is in the format of the time base, to avoid errors if the user's chosen time base is different from the chosen effect time format of the show.
  44. Firing System: Reverted a change that gave Pyrodigital FC-A script exporter the option to choose the SMPTE frame rate; the change was unnecessary because the FC-A always assumes the script is in 30 fps frame rate and is able to adjust to 29.97 fps NDF timecode on its own.
  45. Firing System: Added full support for the Showven FXCommander firing system including pyro and DMX capabilities.
  46. Firing System: Added support for PyroMaster SL4 1x4 slats.
  47. Firing system: Changed Pyrodigital PDM exporter to allow refiring the same pin multiple times; use the 'Addressing > Troubleshooting > Show events with multiple event times' feature if you want to see any refiring pins since there is no longer a warning for such on export.
  48. Firing system: Made 'Export options' dialog appear with 'Continue' button focused so you can just press enter to continue.
  49. Firing System: Added FireOne export option 'Adjust times for SMPTE 29.97 NDF playback rate' with choices 'No' and 'Yes, relative to 00:00:00:00 on timeline' and 'Yes, relative to first event's effect time', giving FireOne users the ability to compensate for the slowness of SMPTE 29.97 NDF non-drop frame timecode.
  50. Firing System: Added FireOne exporter option to adjust for SMPTE 29.97 NDF playback rate by adjusting times within each timecode section as opposed to globally from the beginning of the timeline or the first event, which is what is required to avoid SMPTE 29.97 NDF playback slowness in concert soundtracks containing multiple timecode sections/songs.
  51. Firing System: Added a panel of explanatory text for FireOne timecode options for SMPTE 29.97 NDF timecode.
  52. Firing System: Added 'Adjust times for SMPTE 29.97 NDF timecode' options for Pyrodigital firing systems, supporting all known 29.97 NDF use cases including concert soundtracks with multiple timecode sections for the songs for both the FC-3 and FC-A controller, enabling the FC-3 controller to be used in 30 FPS mode while receiving 29.97 NDF timecode or a mixture of timecode formats and enabling the FC-A controller to be used in 30 FPS SMPTE AUTO FIRE mode while receiving 29.97 NDF timecode or a mixture of timecode formats.
  53. Firing system: Added Cobra v7.x script format including DMX track/script labels and the ramp-to field.
  54. Firing system: Added Piroshow V3 including the DMX Universe field and V4 including the ramp-end-value and ramp-duration fields.
  55. Firing system: Added an option in the position properties which causes all events in the position to be excluded from addressing and from exported firing system scripts. This feature is useful if you have positions with events solely for visualization, such as for water cake visualizations made by hand using multiple positions and events in the water.
  56. Firing system: Limited Cobra 7.0 string length for track labels and for hazard class to 64 characters.
  57. Firing System: Updated Cobra exporter to support channel range 1-199 for V6 and V7 Cobra firmware.
  58. Firing System: Added 'File > Import > Import firing system script > FireOne SEM file...' which imports the 'Event' field in the SEM as the 'Track' field in Finale.
  59. Firing System: Made importing FIR and SEM files pad module and pin numbers with leading zeros, so they sort nicely in the script window.
  60. Addressing: Improved 'Same rack' and 'Rack number' addressing sort criteria to take into consideration whether chains fit into the rack. Sorting by SAME RACK > CHAINS FIRST thus, in combination, fills up a rack with chains that fit into the rack and the fills the remaining empty tubes in the rack before moving on to filling chains into the next rack, yielding a naturally incrementing pin order across racks while still filling the racks with chains before the single shells.
  61. Addressing: Improved the 'Same Rack' and 'Rack Number' addressing sort criteria to take into consideration whether the pin constraints include the term 'Rack'. In the improved behavior, the 'Same Rack' and 'Rack Number' sorting criteria require that chains fit in the racks if and only if the pin constraints include 'Rack'.
  62. Addressing: Added new addressing sort criteria 'Most Horizontal Tilt' and 'Most Horizontal Tilt -- Single-Shot' to support allocating and loading single-shot racks that have wider angle range constraints on the outside tube-slots than the interior tube-slots. For more details, visit the Special sort terms documentation.
  63. Addressing: Made the addressing option 'Rearrange tubes in adjustable angle racks' work even if the racks have per-assigned pins, which previously wasn't supported. In combination with the 'Most Horizontal Tilt' sort criteria, Finale can now allocate and fill ss racks with angle range constraints optimally and also have a regular pin sequence in the rack using pre-wired pins, if that's what you want.
  64. Addressing: Remove the requirement that module numbers in position properties' Pre-Assigned Rails are not in multiple positions, and rely on the user to ensure that any such shared module numbers do not end up with overlapping pin assignments in the positions that share them.
  65. Addressing: Made the rack/tube assignment option 'Re-arrange effects to avoid collisions' do the globally optimal rearrangement for the entire rack instead of doing the optimal rearrangement for each row in the rack for pre-wired pin racks and for racks with fan tube angle range constraints, which previously was a limitation; the rearrangement produces a markedly better result now for these circumstances.
  66. Racks: Made the 'Load effects with existing firing system addresses into racks' and 'Load into racks' commands NOT do any rearrangement in racks that have pre-wired pins, since doing so would change the pin numbers which the user may be assuming are preserved.
  67. Effects: Fix an import issue causing some custom effects to get incorrect intensity curve animation settings.
  68. Effects: Fixed a bug that caused stars ending in reports to not get tips or trails if the VDL term 'Report' was used at the beginning of the VDL phase instead of the end. For example, 'Report Silver Willow' will now automatically be parsed as 'Silver Willow to Report'.
  69. Effects: Fixed a crash that could occur when there were duplicate VDL terms like 'crackling' in an effect.
  70. Effects: Fixed tiger tail emit style
  71. Effects: Fixed a bug where comets with a transition (such as 'Red to Green comet') would 'bounce' at the transition point, instead of continuing in a natural trajectory.
  72. Rendering: Add options to save as EXR or BMP image sequence when rendering videos.
  73. Rendering: Fixed a bug causing effect preview videos to not play on some GPUs.
  74. Rendering: Disable icon rendering while a show is playing.
  75. Rendering: Fixed a bug that caused the L/R sound balance to not work correctly when rendering videos.
  76. DMX: Fixed a bug in 'Detect and fix DMX pan problems', making it capable of fixing more problems automatically.
  77. DMX: Internal changes to DMX effect implementation that are leading up to supporting new DMX features like fades and color blends and 'latest takes precedence'.
  78. DMX: Improved formatting of effect descriptions of DMX effects in the effects window and script window, moving the bracketed numbers to the end of the description so the descriptions sort more nicely and are easier to read.
  79. DMX: Added red text warning when user sets DMX Channel Base out of the valid 1-512 range in the edit position properties or 'Configure as DMX fixture' dialogs.
  80. DMX: Changed visualization of DMX modifier effects that do not affect the effect angle to be a dotted line with a solid circle on top instead of a donut and made the trajectories always vertical no matter what their pan/tilt are. Examples of modifier effects are 'With Strobing' or 'Reset fixture' for changing the trajectory angle is meaningless.
  81. DMX: Changed trajectory appearance for trajectories of effects that are not rotatable, and disabled rotation UI for trajectories of non-rotatable effects.
  82. DMX: Improve DMX patches for Explo X2 Wave Flamer, Showven Circle Flamer and Spark Fabrica Moving Head Flamer, making the program/macro effects set the macro number, channel +4, 100ms prior to the ignition, channel +2, which occurs at the desired effect time. Setting the macro number before setting the ignition appears to be required in some fixture/module hardware combinations.
  83. Design Layout: Added the 'Set front view orientation' menu item to the right-click menu for clicking on 3D models and Google 3D maps; previously this item was only available when clicking on the grass or 2D Google map.
  84. Design Layout: Added a checkbox to the 'Set front view' dialog from right-click context menu on ground. The checkbox is 'Align sky dome to front view', defaulting to 'on', which rotates the sky dome to keep the pretty view facing forward.
  85. Design Layout: Made the front/top/side camera views rise if the Google 3D map surface at Origin Man is above zero.
  86. Design Layout: Fixed minor issue where the front/side/top camera view buttons didn't remain highlighted when in effect if the front view had been changed from the default.
  87. Positions: Fixed the problem with 'Add multiple positions' in which the positions coordinates would escalate stepping into the sky if the first position was being added above sea level.
  88. Design Layout: Automatically raise positions above surface when adding model or 3D Google map.
  89. Timeline: Made the dotted line above the song waveform in the timeline act as a button when songs are locked to zoom timeline to focus on the exact range of the song, which makes navigating on timeline easy for large shows with many songs, particularly shows with SMPTE songs spread out far apart on hour intervals. Clicking on the magnifying glass icon in the upper right of the timeline while no effects are selected zooms the timeline out to the entire show duration; clicking on a song's control bar zooms in to that song; thus you can zoom out and into any song with just two clicks. Setting can be disabled from the Show Settings menu.
  90. Timeline: Made show duration automatically increase to accommodate operations including dragging effects or songs, creating sequences, spreading out effects, shifting effects, etc.
  91. Timeline: Added a help dialog when automatically expanding show duration to tell users how to set show duration manually.
  92. Timeline: Added a 'do not show again' type of dialog for clicking the song bar which explains the new feature and tells user how to turn it off.
  93. Timeline: Improved snapping for dragging events on timeline by snapping to end times in addition to effect times on timeline.
  94. Timeline: Minor improvement to timeline bar appearance by preventing blip from making endcap look misaligned.
  95. Timeline: Added user setting 'Timeline events snap to play head' to support disabling this snapping feature.
  96. Timeline: Added user setting 'Timeline events snap to event times' as a new feature for manual/pinboard shows to make it easy to snap a group of events with different prefire times on the same firing system pin.
  97. Timeline: Made DMX events on timeline snap based on their end times in addition to their start times, making it easy to align effects back-to-back and easy to align groups of events to end at the same time.
  98. Timeline: Added temporary setting 'DMX effects for fixture are all shown on same row on timeline' which defaults to ON, the current behavior, but enables users to turn it off to make DMX effects cascade on the timeline like pyro effects, which can be useful if you have overlapping DMX effects.
  99. Timeline: Improved hit detection for selecting overlapping effects on timeline by giving priority to selected effects; if you have overlapping effects for the same fixture on the timeline represented by overlapping horizontal lines and you want to drag the effect bar of a specific line in the sandwich of overlapping lines, simply select the effect in the script window first, and then you will be able to click and drag it on the timeline without the overlapping effects interfering.
  100. Timeline: Changed the timeline bars of DMX effects by making the end cap at the right end of the bar turn into a full height vertical line when hovering over it or dragging it to change the effect duration; the vertical line makes it easy to see when you are trying to click on it.
  101. Scripting: Preserve position field of an empty event in script when setting its effect by clicking on a row in the effects window while the event is selected.
  102. Scripting: Added a nudge feature for left/right arrow keys which moves the selected effects on the timeline by a delta you can set. Hold control and shift while pressing the arrow keys to nudge.
  103. Scripting: Added 'Show > Show settings... > Set nudge delta for Ctrl + Shift + Arrow Keys'.
  104. Position layout: improved alignment guide, which was unreliable if showing distances in feet.
  105. Position layout: Fixed alignment guide and box around reference position, which were not axis aligned if user has changed front view orientation.
  106. Position layout: fixed display of coordinates when moving multiple positions after having changed front view orientation, which previously didn't take into consideration the revised front view orientation.
  107. Position layout: Improved alignment guides, making it easier to align position with each other.
  108. Music: Detect unsupported WAV encoding/formats and report an error instead of failing silently and leaving the user wondering why the song didn't load.
  109. Fill handle: Fixed and improved the 'fill handle' feature for dragging the little black dot in the lower right corner of selected cells or columns of multiple cells in the table window, supporting the Excel features and more. See the 'fill handle' section in the Copy/paste and the fill handle documentation.
  110. New Show: Made the 'File > New show' function automatically use the startup template show that the user defines in the 'File > User settings' menu, if it exists.
  111. New Show: Added 'New blank show' to the Admin menu since the 'File > New show' now creates a new show from the startup template if you have defined one, and you may want to create a new blank show once in a while even while you have a startup template defined.
  112. Fixed a bug that could cause a crash when unexpected data is present in a show (.FIN) file.
  113. UI: Improved dialog window placement so dialogs always appear on the same monitor as the main application window.
  114. Reset Machine: Add 'Reset machine activations' link to dialog message that explains that you are running in trial mode because your license is active on a different machine.
  115. Language: Updated Brazilian Portuguese UI translation.
  116. Language: Updated Chinese UI translation.
  117. Language: Updated French UI translation.
  118. Language: Updated German UI translation.
  119. Language: Updated Italian UI translations.
  120. Language: Updated Norwegian UI translation.
  121. Language: Updated Polish UI translation.
  122. Language: Updated Russian UI translation.
  123. Language: Updated Ukrainian UI translation.

finale3d-installer-2024.05.15-79480a9ec

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Maps downloader dialog: Several usability improvements.

finale3d-installer-2024.05.10-2c8b97e2d

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Maps downloader dialog: Reverse changes to the show brightness and fog when the dialog is cancelled.
  2. Maps downloader dialog: Fix bug causing the 3d models to be displayed at the wrong height offset.

finale3d-installer-2024.05.08-057745361

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Maps downloader: Show feedback in maps download interface when downloading 3d models.

finale3d-installer-2024.05.06-c8090b35e

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Fix bug causing 2d map download region to still be too small.

finale3d-installer-2024.05.04-b7d5d7058

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Added a checkbox to the 'Set front view' dialog from right-click context menu on ground. The checkbox is 'Align sky dome to front view', defaulting to 'on', which rotates the sky dome to keep the pretty view facing forward.
  2. Made the front/top/side camera views rise if the google 3D map surface at Origin Man is above zero.
  3. Fixed minor issue that the front/side/top camera view buttons didn't remain highlighted when in effect if the front view had been changed from the default.
  4. Add 'Reset machine activations' link to dialog message that explains that you are running in trial mode because your license is active on a different machine.
  5. Automatically raise positions above surface when adding model or 3D google map.
  6. Updated Cobra exporter to support channel range 1-199 for V6 and V7 Cobra firmware.
  7. Slightly improved performance of app for 3D google maps by removing hit testing for models on mouse movements without button clicks, when models are locked in place.
  8. Detect unsupported WAV encoding/formats and report error instead of failing silently and leaving the user wondering why the song didn't load.
  9. Updated Brazilian Portuguese UI translation.
  10. Position layout: improved alignment guide, which was unreliable if showing distances in feet.
  11. Position layout: Fixed alignment guide and box around reference position, which were not axis aligned if user has changed front view orientation.
  12. Position layout: fixed display of coordinates when moving multiple positions after having changed front view orientation, which previously didn't take into consideration the revised front view orientation.
  13. Position layout: Improved alignment guides, making it easier to align position with each other.
  14. Added 'File > Import > Import firing system script > FireOne SEM file...' which imports the 'Event' field in the SEM as the 'Track' field in Finale.
  15. Made importing FIR and SEM files pad module and pin numbers with leading zeros, so they sort nicely in the script winddow.
  16. Improve performance of 3d scene after 3d maps have been downloaded.
  17. Make the Maps dialog stay open while the data is being committed to the 3d client.
  18. Fix the hit-testing on downloaded map models with respect to the bounding regions.
  19. Change the way the maps download dialog tints the model preview in the 3d view.
  20. Fix a bug causing the 2d map to not be correctly applied if there is no 3d map content.
  21. Fix a performance issue with loading large shows.
  22. Fix a bug causing choppy playback on some computers.
  23. Make the 2d map region as large as it used to be.

finale3d-installer-2024.03.29-25e477816

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Fix bug: Comets with a transition (such as 'Red to Green comet') would 'bounce' at the transition point, instead of continuing in a natural trajectory.
  2. Update German UI translation.
  3. Improve DMX patches for Explo X2 Wave Flamer, Showven Circle Flamer and Spark Fabrica Moving Head Flamer, making the program/macro effects set the macro number, channel +4, 100ms prior to the ignition, channel +2, which occurs at the desired effect time. Setting the macro number before setting the ignition appears to be required in some fixture/module hardware combinations.
  4. Added the 'Set front view orientation' menu item to the context menu for clicking on models and Google 3D maps; previously this item was only available when clicking on the grass or 2D Google map.
  5. Fixed the problem with 'Add multiple positions' in which the positions coordinates would escalate stepping into the sky if the first position was being added above sea level.
  6. Fix a bug with the 3D maps downloader model height offsets causing models to float too high in the air.

finale3d-installer-2024.03.25-228539eeb

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Fix bug: L/R sound balance was not working correctly when rendering videos.
  2. Fix bug: TigerTail emit style was broken.
  3. Added Cobra v7.x script format including DMX track/script labels and the ramp-to field.
  4. Added Piroshow V3 including the DMX Universe field and V4 including the ramp-end-value and ramp-duration fields.
  5. Added a firing system option in the position properties called which causes all events in the position to be excluded from addressing and from exported firing system scripts. This feature is useful if you have positions with events solely for visualization, such as for water cake visualizations made by hand using multiple positions and events in the water.
  6. Fixed minor rack layout bug in which the rack cluster dimensions shown in the rack layout view had included the slight margin of the colored box instead of being strictly the dimensions of the bounding box of the racks.
  7. Limited Cobra 7.0 string length for track labels and for hazard class to 64 characters.

finale3d-installer-2024.03.16-c7e05825f

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Fix a bug causing the effect preview video to not play on some GPUs.
  2. Added new and improved Google Maps downloading dialog, supporting 3D models, and separate low and high-detail download rectangles.
  3. Change wording on menu item to 'Remove Google Maps ground image and models'
  4. Made the rack/tube assignment option 'Re-arrange effects to avoid collisions' do the globally optimal rearrangement for the entire rack instead of doing the optimal rearrangement for each row in the rack for pre-wired pin racks and for racks with fan tube angle range constraints, which previously was a limitation; the rearrangement produces a markedly better result now for these circumstances.
  5. Made the 'Load effects with existing firing system addresses into racks' and 'Load into racks' commands NOT do any rearrangement in racks that have pre-wired pins, since doing so would change the pin numbers which the user may be assuming are preserved.
  6. Added a warning dialog to 'Effects > Sound levels > Select effects missing sound levels' when the collection has a large number of effects, telling the user it may take a while.
  7. Added red text warning when user sets DMX Channel Base out of the valid 1-512 range in the edit position properties or configure as DMX fixture dialogs.
  8. Changed visualization of DMX modifier effects that do not affect the effect angle to be a dotted line with a solid circle on top instead of a donut and made the trajectories always vertical no matter what their pan/tilt are. Examples of modifier effects are 'With Strobing' or 'Reset fixture' for changing the trajectory angle is meaningless.
  9. Changed trajectory appearance for trajectories of effects that are not rotatable, and disabled rotation UI for trajectories of non-rotatable effects.
  10. Improved snapping for dragging events on timeline by snapping to end times in addition to effect times on timeline.
  11. Minor improvement to timeline bar appearance by preventing blip from making endcap look misaligned.
  12. Added per-user setting 'Timeline events snap to playhead' to support disabling this snapping feature.
  13. Added per-user setting 'Timeline events snap to event times' as a new feature for manual/pinboard shows to make easy to snap a group of events with different prefire times on the same firing system pin.
  14. Made DMX events on timeline snap based on their end times in addition to their start times, making it easy to align effects back-to-back and easy to align groups of events to end at the same time.
  15. Added temporary setting 'DMX effects for fixture are all shown on same row on timeline' which defaults to ON, the current behavior, but enables users to turn it off to make DMX effects cascade on the timeline like pyro effects, which can be useful if you have overlapping DMX effects.
  16. Improved hit detection for selecting overlapping effects on timeline by giving priority to selected effects; if you have overlapping effects for the same fixture on the timeline represented by overlapping horizontal lines and you want to drag the effect bar of a specific line in the sandwich of overlapping lines, simply select the effect in the script window first, and then you will be able to click and drag it on the timeline without the overlapping effects interfering.
  17. Changed the timeline bars of DMX effects by making the end cap at the right end of the bar turn into a full height vertical line when you are hover over it or drag it to change the effect duration; the vertical line makes it easy to see when you are trying to click on it.
  18. Disable icon rendering while a show is playing.
  19. Fix a bug causing choppy performance on playback.
  20. Added a nudge feature for left/right arrow keys which moves the selected effects on the timeline by a delta you can set. Hold control and shift while pressing the arrow keys to nudge.
  21. Added 'Show > Show settings... > Set nudge delta for Ctrl + Shift + Arrow Keys'.
  22. Update French UI translation.
  23. Updated Norwegian UI translation.
  24. Updated Ukrainian UI translation.
  25. Updated Russian UI translation.
  26. Update Brazilian Portuguese UI translation.
  27. Updated Chinese UI translation.

finale3d-installer-2024.02.23-18f9290b1

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Updated Brazilian Portuguese UI translation.
  2. Updated Chinese UI translation.
  3. Updated French UI translation.
  4. Updated Italian UI translation.
  5. Internal changes to DMX effect implementation that are leading up to supporting new DMX features like fades and color blends and 'latest takes precedence'.
  6. Improvements to Showven FXcommander exporter.
  7. Removed negative timecode selector from export soundtrack dialog of lite version.
  8. Improved formatting of effect descriptions of DMX effects in the effects window and script window, moving the bracketed numbers to the end of the description so the descriptions sort more nicely and are easier to read.

finale3d-installer-2024.02.08-ec1b63301

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Added FireOne exporter option to adjust for SMPTE 29.97 NDF playback rate by adjusting times within each timecode section as opposed to globally from the beginning of the timeline or the first event, which is what is required to avoid SMPTE 29.97 NDF playback slowness in concert soundtracks containing multiple timecode sections/songs.
  2. Added a panel of explanatory text for FireOne timecode options for SMPTE 29.97 NDF timecode.
  3. Added 'Adjust times for SMPTE 29.97 NDF timecode' options for Pyrodigital firing systems, supporting all known 29.97 NDF use cases includeing concert soundtracks with multiple timecode sections for the songs for both the FC-3 and FC-A controller, enabling the FC-3 controller to be used in 30 FPS mode while receiving 29.97 NDF timecode or a mixture of timecode formats and enabling the FC-A controller to be used in 30 FPS SMPTE AUTO FIRE mode while receiving 29.97 NDF timecode or a mixture of timecode formats.
  4. Remove the requirement that module numbers in position properties' Pre-Assigned Rails are not in multiple positions, and rely on the user to ensure that that any such shared module numbers do not end up with overlapping pin assignments in the positions that share them.

finale3d-installer-2024.02.06-f453b5c56

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Fixed a bug in 'Detect and fix DMX pan problems', making it capable of fixing more problems automatically.
  2. Made 'Export options' dialog appear with 'Continue' button focused so you can just press enter to continue.
  3. Preserve position field of an empty event in script when setting its effect by clicking on a row in the effects window while event is selected.
  4. Fixed bug in timecode soundtrack importing that could cause the wrong frame rate to appear in the songs window and songs report.
  5. Added FireOne export option 'Adjust times for SMPTE 29.97 NDF playback rate' with choices 'No' and 'Yes, relative to 00:00:00:00 on timeline' and 'Yes, relative to first event's effect time', giving FireOne users the ability to compensate for the slowness of SMPTE 29.97 NDF non-drop frame timecode.

finale3d-installer-2024.02.05-e6526f1a9

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Improved Showven FXCommander firing system exporter and added full DMX support to the exporter.
  2. Added support for PyroMaster SL4 1x4 slats.
  3. Changed Pyrodigital PDM exporter to allow refiring the same pin at multiple times; use the 'Addressing > Troubleshooting > Show events with multiple event times' feature if you want to see any refiring pins since there is no longer a warning for such on export.
  4. Made dialogs appear on the same monitor that the main application window is on, if you have turned on 'File > User settings > Use multiple monitors for window layout'. Previously dialogs would always appear on the main monitor and there was nothing you could do about it.
  5. Made the dialogs appear on the same monitor as the main application window always, even if the user has not checked 'File > User settings > Use multiple monitors for window layout.'

finale3d-installer-2024.01.15-f5d87c0dd

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Updated Italian UI translations.
  2. Added 'Show > Settings... > Set sound level chart measurement location...' and moved the XYZ coordinates fields out of the blueprint and into this new function, so the blueprint no longer has any show-specific dependencies.
  3. Added context menu item 'Coordinates of this point...' to the design view context menus for clicking on terrain, positions, and models.
  4. Improved sound level chart blueprint dialog.
  5. Improved format of sound level charts to make LAeq more prominent relative to max dB.
  6. Changed default ambient sound level to 45 dB.
  7. Modified rack angle colors to avoid red that could be confused with the error color.
  8. Changes 'Name' column to 'Filename' in songs table.
  9. Added automatic dimension rulers to rack cluster visualizations.
  10. Added option in rack layout blueprints to show/higlight the rack clusters.
  11. Fixed the rack size/address/angle/annotation font size for very small racks.
  12. Increased the resolution of the rulers in the rack and site layout views when distances are less than 10m.
  13. Fixed the text positioning in horizontal rulers in rack/site layouts, which previously intersected the line.
  14. Changed 'Racks > Rack window settings > Enable background image in rack layout view' to default to false.
  15. Added 'Show rack cluster rulers' as a separate checkbox on the rack layout blueprint configuration page.
  16. Draw cluster ruler lines in white and with white background for text if rack layout has a dark background image.
  17. Made rack cluster annotations constant size, even for very small racks.
  18. Added 'SMPTE Start/End/Format' to songs table.
  19. Added new report blueprint 'Reports > Special reports > SMPTE Song List'.
  20. Added red hint text to 'Rack colors' field of physical specifications to show the default value or an exmaple, so you know what to type.
  21. Improved formatting of 'SMPTE Song List' report.

finale3d-installer-2024.01.03-121ec2acc

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Fixed/improved SMPTE 'Analyze timecode in soundtrack file' function and the automatic alignment and/or splitting up functions for adding soundtracks to the show that contain timecode or timecode sections. Previously the interpreted timecode framerates for SMPTE miscalculated if the soundtrack file had many missing/bad timecode frames in the file, which occurred most frequently with timecode stored in MP3 files. This problem is now fixed, and the frame rate calculation is robust even if there are missings frames.
  2. Updated German UI translation.
  3. Updated Norwegian translation more.
  4. Improved font size scaling for tubes and cakes in rack diagrams to better accommodate very tight user-defined rack dimensions.
  5. Support racks snapping to each other length-wise in addition to width-wise.
  6. Added colorful visualization of rack clusters when dragging racks in rack layout view.
  7. Changed rack cluster calculation to take into account rack dimensions. The new rack cluster visualization enables you to see at a glance if the change affects an existing show, which is unlikely.
  8. Added 'Rack color' as an attribute you can specify in the 'Set physical specifications' context menu for racks and effects. By setting the rack color attribute you can make the rack diagrams match the colors of your real world racks.
  9. Made 'Print batch...' function automatically create any missing subdirectories in the user's specified Default Pathnames of the blueprints.
  10. Added 'Skip empty documents' checkbox to 'Print batch...' function.
  11. Added two timestamp variable options for 'Print batch...', {date_time_local} and {date_time_utc}.
  12. Removed any illegal filename characters from the default filenames for 'Print batch...'
  13. Added color gradient visualization of tube angles in rack layout view whenever user is in 'Drag and drop pins' mode. The colors of the tubes range from cool aiming left to warm colors aiming right, making it easy to see if you have any colliding tube angles in single shot racks.
  14. Added legend for angle colors to rack layout view when user is hovering cursor over the 'Drag and drop pins' link.
  15. Changed the automatic annotations added by the 'Add racks for show' function to be the rack descriptions rather than the rack part numbers.
  16. Made the 'Add racks for show' function add automatic annotations for cake racks in addition to the other single shot and mortar racks. Previously cake racks didn't get annotations.
  17. Added new menu item 'Show > Set side panel text...' with options to set the side panel text for diagrams and charts. Charts are new, and there's currently only one type of chart, which is the sound level chart.
  18. Added context sensitive instructions in the side panel text of sound level charts that tell the user how to get started if the effects don't have decibel at distance specifications yet.
  19. Added red help text in 'Physical specifications' dialog to explain default value for gap between racks and for why decibels at distance needs distance.

finale3d-installer-2023.12.19-34a926d61

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Improve the 'Add song' function for aligning a soundtrack containing only a single timecode section, similar to the multi-timecode section improvement, to address the issues with supporting SMPTE 29.97 NDF timecode.
  2. Add a per-user setting 'Clicking song bar zooms to song' which is on by default to enable clicking the song bar to zoom the timeline to the song, but giving the option to turn it off since the feature can get in the way.
  3. Added a 'do not show again' type of dialog for clicking the song bar which explains the new feature and tells user how to turn it off.
  4. Added a new label format Avery 3651 A4 which is the same is the Chinese format C3053.
  5. Retuned the labels option that adjusts the positions of labels on the page to pull them away from the edges of label page formats that do not have borders between the labels and the edges of the page to accommodate printers that don't print all the way to the edges of the page. The retuning prevents the adjustment from positioning labels flush against border between labels on the interior of the page, which can also be a source of problems if pages aren't aligned in the printer perfectly.
  6. Reverted a change that gave Pyrodigital FC-A script exporter the option to choose the SMPTE frame rate; the change was unnecessary because the FC-A always assumes the script is in 30 fps frame rate and is able to adjust to 29.97 fps NDF timecode on its own.
  7. Update Norwegian UI translation.
  8. Fix the site/rack layout diagram options for specifying the size of the info panel and legend
  9. Added new addressing sort criteria 'Most Horizontal Tilt' and 'Most Horizontal Tilt -- Single-Shot' to support allocating and loading single-shot racks that have wider angle range constraints on the outside tube-slots than the interior tube-slots.
  10. Made the addressing option 'Rearrange tubes in adjustable angle racks' work even if the racks have per-assigned pins, which previously wasn't supported. In combination with the 'Most Horizontal Tilt' sort criteria, Finale can now allocate and fill ss racks with angle range constraints optimally and also have a regular pin sequence in the rack using pre-wired pins, if that's what you want.
  11. Made rack annotations, rail numbers, calibers, angles a constant font size, instead of varying based on rack caliber.
  12. Added 'Edit physical specifications' function for effects and racks, which includes specifying rack footprint width and height.
  13. Rack diagrams now draw racks with the user-defined width and height physical specifications, which enables making cake slice racks of realistic dimensions for housing cake slices.
  14. Add option to save as EXR image sequence when rendering video.
  15. Add option to save as BMP image sequence when rendering video.
  16. Fix a bug that could cause unexpected data in a .FIN file to crash Finale3D.

finale3d-installer-2023.12.05-0897ffaf2

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Fixed a crash that could occur when loading saved 2D Google Maps data.
  2. Improve 'Tools > Analyze timecode in file' dialog and add song dialog.
  3. Improve the 'Add song' function when importing soundtracks with multiple timecode sections by identifying the exact start times of the timecode sections instead of taking a few frames to lock on to the timecode sections, as the real-time SMPTE tracking requires to avoid spurious jumps.
  4. Improve the 'Add song' function for importing soundtracks with multiple timecode sections by importing the sections on the timeline at their literal HHMMSSFF timecode times instead of the real-world interpretations of those times, which doesn't work well for SMPTE 29.97 NDF timecode.
  5. Add option in Pyrodigital exporter for setting the time base to SMTPE 29.97 NDF, enabling the exported PDM script to remain in synch with 29.97 NDF timecode if the that is what is driving the controller. Without this setting, 29.97 NDF timecode drives the controller to play the script slightly too slow, accumulating to 1.2 seconds late on a 20-minute show. This issue only pertains to 29.97 NDF timecode.
  6. Add a red text warning in the Pyrodigital exporter if the user chooses SMPTE 29.97 NDF time base while having multiple timecode sections, because the 29.97 NDF time base does not align with real-world time, which is incorrect for most workflows involving multiple timecode sections in the same show.
  7. In the Pyrodigital exporter, if the user is exporting a script with a script export offset, then add a red text hint next to the time base field showing what the script export offset is in the format of the time base, to avoid errors if the user's chosen time base is different from the chosen effect time format of the show.
  8. Add a warning when setting the show's effect time format to SMPTE 29.97 NDF while having multiple timecode sections in the show, since SMPTE 29.97 NDF does not work for most workflows involving multiple timecode sections on the timeline.

finale3d-installer-2023.11.29-08fd42f63

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Timecode: Made a slight change to the alignment of exported FireOne FSK to align it exactly to the FireOne reference files to within a millisecond.
  2. Timecode: Made 'Analyze timecode in soundtrack file...' function slightly more forgiving for decoding Pyrodigital FSK so it doesn't report bad frames in the Pyrodigital reference FSK files, which have some slightly misaligned frames.
  3. Timecode: Added a filter to reduce frequency harmonics in exported StarFire FSK timecode.
  4. Timecode: Added a low-pass filter to exported SMPTE.
  5. Timecode: Changed the filter on the SMPTE generator to be a rise-time filter that preserves the square wave more than a strong low pass filter.
  6. Timecode: Improved 'Add song...' and 'Align song to timecode' to handle concert soundtracks with multiple timecode sections for various SMPTE hours stored back-to-back or with small gaps in the soundtrack WAV file. Add/align song now automatically splits up the song according to its timecode sections and aligns the sections independently on the timeline.
  7. Made the dotted control bar over songs act as a button when songs are locked to zoom timeline to focus on the exact range of the song, which makes navigating on timeline easy for large shows with many songs, particularly shows with SMPTE songs spread out far apart on hour intervals. Clicking on the magnifying glass icon in the upper right of the timeline while no effects are selected zooms the timeline out to the entire show duration; clicking on a song's control bar zooms in to that song; thus you can zoom out and in to any song with just two clicks.
  8. Improved the dotted line control bars above the songs by drawing them in no less than a minimum width, so short songs in a long 10hr or 20hr SMPTE timeline don't have invisibly small control bars. The control bars now operate as a button to zoom the timeline to the song's time range, so it is now rather important that the control bars remain visible even when the timeline is zoomed fully out on a long timeline.
  9. New feature: Added 'File > Print batch...' function that prints a batch of reports, labels, diagrams, and/or charts associated with a batch tag, which is a new field of the blueprints.
  10. Improved 'Print batch...' function by making 'Default Pathname' optional; present a dialog to choose the directory and use the report Title if not specified in Default Pathname.
  11. Make 'Print batch...' automatically open folder of saved files after completing operation.
  12. Added 'Default Pathname' as a new field in blueprints for reports, charts, diagrams, and labels. The default pathname can be a filename (myfilename.pdf) or absolute path with a filename (C:\Users\John\Documents\myfilename.pdf) or absolute directory path (C:\Users\John\Documents\Shows). The Default Pathname makes the 'Save as' dialog appear with your choice of filename or directory, as a convenience.
  13. Added support for variables in the Default Pathnames field for blueprints, enabling the blueprint to create a default pathname using information about the show. The variables are: {show_name}, {show_filename}, {show_date}, {show_directory}, {show_optional1}, {show_optional2}, {show_location}. The variables can be used anywhere in the Default Pathname, such as: C:\Users\John\Documents\{show_name}\{show_name}_Wiring_Script.
  14. Labels: Improved the label content box format option 'Fancy Angle Colors', adding BLUE as another color. Red = house right, Green = house left, Blue = upright but turned around, Black = other. The blue color is to identify cakes that are flipped around to reverse the angle patterns.
  15. Added a Custom Blueprint Field to blueprints, which can contain static text to appear in labels. The Custom Blueprint Field can be set in the dialog for creating or editing labels. Having set the Custom Blueprint Field's text, you can choose Custom Blueprint Field as a content box in the labels. One use for static text in labels is add an explicit field name, like 'Module' or 'DMX Channel Base:' to explain what a number on the label is.
  16. Labels: Added new content fields for labels for printing DMX fixture labels, and documented in the 'Labels basic instructions' documentation page; the new fields are: DMX Channel Base, DMX Channel Range, DMX Universe, DMX Fixture Name, DMX Fixture Nickname, DMX Fixture Angle.
  17. Timeline: Made show duration automatically expand to accommodate operations, including dragging effects or songs, creating sequences, spreading out effects, shifting effects, etc.
  18. Added a help dialog when automatically expanding show duration to tell users how to set show duration manually.
  19. Made the 'File > New show' function automatically use the startup template show that user defines in the 'File > User settings' menu, if it exists.
  20. Added 'New blank show' to the Admin menu since the 'File > New show' now creates a new show from the startup template if you have defined one, and you may want to create new blank show once in a while even while you have a startup template defined.

finale3d-installer-2023.11.15-3944fea10

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Improved the 'Same Rack' and 'Rack Number' addressing sort criteria to take into consideration whether the pin constraints include the term 'Rack'. In the improved behavior, the 'Same Rack' and 'Rack Number' sorting criteria require that chains fit in the racks if and only if the pin constraints include 'Rack'.
  2. Fixed a crash bug.
  3. Fix a crash bug that occurred if you downloaded 2D map data from Google Maps, without also downloading 3D map data.
  4. Updated Brazilian PB language UI.
  5. Fixed a crash that occurred when loading GLB files.
  6. Fixed a crash that could occur when there were duplicate VDL terms like 'crackling' in an effect.
  7. Added FSK exporters for Pyrodigital, Pyromate, FireOne, and StarFire, in the 'File > Export > Export soundtrack...'
  8. Added negative FSK timecode option for FireOne and StarFire exporters.
  9. Added 'File > Tools > Analyze timecode in soundtrack file...' that reads all variations of FSK and all variations of SMPTE, and displays a summary of all timecode frames in the file, the alignment, the number of jumps, and bad/error frames, with the option of exporting all timecode data contained in the soundtrack file as a human readable log.

finale3d-installer-2023.11.02-0e5cb584f

BETA RELEASE
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  1. New feature: Finale 3D Pro can now download 3D model data from Google Maps.
  2. Effect Parsing: Fixed a bug that caused stars ending in reports to not get tips or trails if the VDL term 'Report' was used at the beginning of the VDL phase instead of the end. For example, 'Report Silver Willow' will now automatically be parsed as 'Silver Willow to Report'.

finale3d-installer-2023.10.16-3840d053a

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Effects: Fix an import issue causing some customized blob effects to get incorrect intensity curve animation settings.
  2. Updated Polish UI translation.
  3. Improved 'Same rack' and 'Rack number' addressing sort criteria to take into consideration whether chains fit into the rack. Sorting by SAME RACK > CHAINS FIRST thus, in combination, fills up a rack with chains that fit into the rack and the fills the remaining empty tubes in the rack before moving on to filling chains into the next rack, yielding a naturally incrementing pin order across racks while still filling the racks with chains before the single shells.
  4. Fixed and improved the 'fill handle' feature for dragging the little black dot in the lower right corner of selected cells or columns of multiple cells in the table window, supporting the Excel features and more. See the 'fill handle' section in the Copy/paste and the fill handle docuementation.

finale3d-installer-2023.10.02-5d6e6ec44

FULL RELEASE
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  1. Fix Parallels 19 crash.
  2. Fix 'missing VCRUNTIME140_1.dll' error.
  3. Effects: Fixed a render bug causing far-away trails to disappear.
  4. Effects: Fixed a bug causing spark colors from older custom sims to parsed incorrectly at import.
  5. Effects: Fix effect compiler bug causing way too many particles to be emitted for effects with duplicated trail colors e.g. 'silver silver peony'.
  6. Effects: Fix 'Shimmering', 'Twinkling', and 'Flashing' to work like 'Strobing', just with different tip animation curves.
  7. Effect Editor: Re-implement 'Custom 2D Break Pattern' and 'Custom JSON Break Pattern' editors.
  8. Effect Editor: Make Custom 2D break pattern editor use colroed dots for stars instead of letters.
  9. Firing system: Added 99 channel module option for Galaxis.
  10. Firing system: Added support for the new Galaxis 20-channel module.
  11. Firing system: Fixed bug in Pyromac DMX-BOX exporter that caused incorrect event times for DMX end events on DMX-BOX modules in semi-automatic shows.
  12. Firing system: Added a new semi-automatic feature for the Pyromac exporter that extracts non-digit text characters before the digit characters in the track names and populates the exported Note field with those non-digit text characters, enabling the user to name the track with a useful name that is displayed on the controller for the cue instead of the name of the first effect in the cue. Example: 'Opening scene 01' --> 'Opening scene' in the Note field.
  13. Racks: Added support for typing angle ranges in the tube angle specifications in the rack definition dialog for racks of type 'Adjustable fan angles of tubes within each row'. Please see new Tube angle range constraints documentation article for instructions.
  14. Racks: Added red warning text in create rack dialog if user adds text to 'Tube fan angles' fields for the rows if the rack's chosen rack structure doesn't support specifying angles or angle ranges.
  15. DMX: Fixed bug that 'DMX > Detect and fix PAN problems' and the warning for such problems on export, could incorrectly report problems that were not problems if the script table wasn't sorted by effect time.
  16. DMX: Added DMX fixture 095 Beam Spot 150W.
  17. DMX: Improved angle sweep motor speed accuracy for DMX fixture 093 DXJ120 FLI Beam 120W.
  18. Improved text in 'Show information' dialog regarding optional offsets.
  19. Added red warning text in create rack dialog if user has added a min without a max size or vice versa; also add warning text if user has not added the units, mm or double quote.
  20. Moved 'Positions > Fix position names' menu item to Admin menu>
  21. Made dragging events and cues on timeline snap-to the playhead.
  22. Made the setting 'Show > Temporary settings > Disable price indicator in design view' also disable the price annotation for a selected range on the timeline.
  23. Made saved window placements get ignored if the saved placement will cause the window to appear offscreen.
  24. Added CE Number, UN Number, and EX Number as options for addressing sorts, addressing constraints, and report sorts.
  25. Fixed minor rack sort order bug with the Rack Number sort criterion when addressing without sorting by Position first.
  26. Changed addressing sort field and reports sort field 'Angle' to 'Angle (Pan, Tilt, Spin)' to clarify what it really means, and added new sort field 'Tilt' which sorts strictly by the tilt field.
  27. Changed StarFire module graphic in rack layout window from 2x16 to 8x4 to make the numbers easier to see.
  28. Fixed rare crash bug when using the fill-handle in lower right corner of cell in effects window for collections other than per-show effects.
  29. Excluded flame, sfx, and light effects from being synched to sales orders in Finale Inventory, since they don't represent physical inventory items.
  30. Models: Added alpha support for GLB models. Selecting and moving models with the mouse and dragging positions to models is not yet supported.
  31. Timecode: Added 'Negative timecode' field to 'Export soundtrack' dialog for the firing systems that support it.
  32. Site layout: Changed the right click context menu item for clicking on positions in the rack layout window to say, 'Set position colors and other diagram data' instead of just 'Set position colors' and added a checkbox in the dialog invoked by that menu item called 'Disable safety circles angle adjustment'. This checkbox enables a user to create site layout diagrams for which safety circles can use a different formula for different positions, i.e., positions by default adjusting safety circles based on effect firing angle with the option of disabling the angle adjustment on a per-position basis.
  33. Site Layout: Added 'Diagram tag' property to site layout and rack layout diagrams, and a related field 'Diagram tag filter' to drawings like icons and text boxes which you can set by right clicking any drawing and choosing 'Edit properties or text' from the context menu. The tags and tag filters enable you to have multiple versions of diagrams for different purposes, such as one version for the AHJ that contains icons of firetrucks, and a different version for the setup crew that contains drawn lines representing firing system cables.
  34. Site Layout: Added diagram tag filters to information boxes on the right side of site/rack layout diagrams to enable different boxes of information for diagrams printed from different blueprints based on the diagram tag in the blueprint.
  35. Site layout: Fixed minor bug in diagram tag filters on drawing elements, preventing filtered out drawing elements from having unnecessary legend items at the bottom of the diagram.
  36. Rack Layout: Fixed bug in position name filter for rack diagrams that resulted in missing racks if user specified a list of specific positions.
  37. Site/rack layout: Changed the 'Edit properties' menu item name to 'Edit properties and text' for right-clicking on drawings in the rack window to make it more obvious how to set the text of a text box and added helper text in the dialog to further make it more intuitive.
  38. Updated Brazilian Portuguese UI translations.
  39. Updated Spanish UI translation.

finale3d-installer-2023.09.23-b9b4b4ac4

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Added 'Negative timecode' field to 'Export soundtrack' dialog for the firing systems that support it.
  2. Fixed minor rack sort order bug with the Rack Number sort criterion when addressing without sorting by Position first.
  3. Added diagram tag filters to information boxes on the right side of site/rack layout diagrams to enable different boxes of information for diagrams printed from different blueprints based on the diagram tag in the blueprint.
  4. Fixed minor bug in diagram tag filters on drawing elements, preventing filtered out drawing elements from having unnecessary legend items at the bottom of the diagram.
  5. Changed StarFire module graphic in rack layout window from 2x16 to 8x4 to make the numbers easier to see.
  6. Fixed rare crash bug when using the fill-handle in lower right corner of cell in effects window for collections other than per-show effects.
  7. Fixed bug in Pyromac DMXBOX exporter that caused incorrect event times for DMX end events on DMXBOX modules in semi-automatic shows.

finale3d-installer-2023.09.18-2173b81ee

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Effect Editor: Make Custom 2D break pattern editor use colroed dots for stars instead of letters.
  2. Fix 'missing vcruntime140_1.dll' error.

finale3d-installer-2023.09.14-6a34e2f35

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Effect Editor: Re-implement 'Custom 2D Break Pattern' and 'Custom JSON Break Pattern' editors.
  2. Effect Parsing: Fix 'shimmering', 'twinkling', and 'flashing' to work like 'strobing', just with different tip animation curves.
  3. Make saved window placements get ignored if the saved placement will cause the window to appear offscreen.

finale3d-installer-2023.09.09-1d3bbfb84

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Fix Parallels 19 rendering crash.
  2. Updated Spanish UI translation.
  3. Added support for typing angle ranges in the tube angle specifications in the rack definition dialog for racks of type 'Adjustable fan angles of tubes within each row'. Please see new Tube angle range constraints documentation article for instructions.
  4. Updated Brazilian Portuguese UI translations.
  5. Improved text in 'Show information' dialog regarding optional offsets.
  6. Added red warning text in create rack dialog if user adds text to 'Tube fan angles' fields for the rows if the rack's chosen rack structure doesn't support specifying angles or angle ranges.
  7. Added red warning text in create rack dialog if user has added a min without a max size or vice versa; also add warning text if user has not added the units, mm or double quote.
  8. Fixed bug that 'DMX > Detect and fix PAN problems' and the warning for such problems on export, could incorrectly report problems that were not problems if the script table wasn't sorted by effect time.
  9. Added 99 channel module option for Galaxis.
  10. Moved 'Positions > Fix position names' menu item to Admin menu>
  11. Made dragging events and cues on timeline snap-to the playhead.
  12. Added support for the new Galaxis 20-channel module.
  13. Inventory: Excluded flame, sfx, and light effects from being synched to sales orders in Finale Inventory, since they don't represent physical inventory items.
  14. Made the setting 'Show > Temporary settings > Disable price indicator in design view' also disable the price annotation for a selected range on the timeline.
  15. Added CE Number, UN Number, and EX Number as options for addressing sorts, addressing constraints, and report sorts.
  16. Changed the right click context menu item for clicking on positions in the rack layout window to say, 'Set position colors and other diagram data' instead of just 'Set position colors' and added a checkbox in the dialog invoked by that menu item called 'Disable safety circles angle adjustment'. This checkbox enables a user to create site layout diagrams for which safety circles can use a different formula for different positions, i.e., positions by default adjusting safety circles based on effect firing angle with the option of disabling the angle adjustment on a per-position basis.
  17. Added a new semi-automatic feature for the Pyromac exporter that extracts non-digit text characters before the digit characters in the track names and populates the exported Note field with those non-digit text characters, enabling the user to name the track with a useful name that is displayed on the controller for the cue instead of the name of the first effect in the cue. Example: 'Opening scene 01' --> 'Opening scene' in the Note field.
  18. Changed addressing sort field and reports sort field 'Angle' to 'Angle (Pan, Tilt, Spin)' to clarify what it really means, and added new sort field 'Tilt' which sorts strictly by the tilt field.
  19. Fixed bug in position name filter for rack diagrams that resulted in missing racks if user specified a list of specific positions.
  20. Added 'Diagram tag' property to site layout and rack layout diagrams, and a related field 'Diagram tag filter' to drawings like icons and text boxes which you can set by right clicking any drawing and choosing 'Edit properties or text' from the context menu. The tags and tag filters enable you to have multiple versions of diagrams for different purposes, such as one version for the AHJ that contains icons of firetrucks, and a different version for the setup crew that contains drawn lines representing firing system cables.
  21. Changed the 'Edit properties' menu item name to 'Edit properties and text' for right-clicking on drawings in the rack window to make it more obvious how to set the text of a text box and added helper text in the dialog to further make it more intuitive.
  22. Improved angle sweep motor speed accuracy for DMX fixture 093 DXJ120 FLI Beam 120W.
  23. Added DMX fixture 095 Beam Spot 150W.
  24. Effects: Fix effect compiler bug causing way too many particles to be emitted for effects with duplicated trail colors e.g. 'silver silver peony'.

finale3d-installer-2023.08.01-a47a01aea

BETA RELEASE
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  1. Effects: Fixed a render bug causing far-away trails to disappear.
  2. Effects: Fixed a bug causing spark colors from older custom sims to parsed incorrectly at import.