Brothers Pyrotechnic and Pyro King catalogs? WikiFireworks support?

[DraperNormous]

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For many years now, I have been using Cobra Show Creator with Wikifireworks to build my pyro-musicals using Brothers Pyrotechnics and Pyro-King wholesale consumer cakes.   I just bought Finale 3D to help me add Pro-line effects to my show.

 

I am pleased to find all my Pro-line effect catalogs.  However, I am VERY disappointed to not find any of my consumer fireworks libraries (mainly Brothers Pyrotechnics and Pyro-King).  I am new to Finale 3D and this forum, but I can’t find any mention of this issue in any of my forum searches.

 

Please forgive me if this is an issue that has been covered extensively, but can someone point me in the right direction on how to get my WikiFireworks library supported in Finale 3D?

 

Thank you!

Roger

[Neil]

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Hi Roger. I’m glad you found the pro line effects you were looking for! Though as you’ve seen, the current selection of consumer-focused cakes is much smaller than the pro line and generic effects and doesn’t include most of what you’re looking for. We recognize the growing demand for consumer cake catalogs, and adding a larger selection of product sims (including consumer items) is something we’re actively working to accomplish.

 

Are there specific consumer cakes that are highest priority for you, that you’d really like to see included in the Finale 3D library? I can’t say when or if any specific items will be added to included supplier catalogs, but as someone with an interest in this area, I like to know which items people need the most.

 

There isn’t currently a way to directly import your WikiFireworks library into Finale 3D, but you can create your own custom effects in Finale 3D to represent the cakes you have. This will allow you to build your shows using the consumer cakes you have in your inventory, but it does take a little time to create each effect within Finale 3D. You can make new effect sims as simple or detailed as you want, but to give you an idea of what I mean, here’s an example of a very basic placeholder cake, created using Finale 3D’s “Visual Descriptive Language” (VDL), that can be made in just a few seconds in Finale 3D:

 

20mm 49 shot 60s placeholder cake

 

This example could be seen as the most basic form of a placeholder cake, designed after the ‘High Falutin’ cake from Brothers (using the tube size, shot count, and timing, but ignoring the actual firework effects to save time now). With more time, you could define the effects used in the cake, the tube arrangements, and even the firing patterns to more accurately represent the cakes you have in your inventory, but even these simple placeholders can allow you to build your shows using effects in the timeline that represent accurate shot counts and durations you’ve specified, with very little time investment.

 

To create a cake like that, open Finale 3D, log in, and then once you’re in the main window, click “Effect” in the top menu, then “Create Effect”. From there, you can type your firework effect or cake description into the “Visual Description (full VDL)” field, give the item a name in the “Name for effect” field, then click “Enter” to save your newly created effect to your “My Effects” list (which appears in the catalogs dropdown like any other effects catalog). From there, you can select the effect from your “My Effects” list and drop it into your show timeline, just like any other effect from the Finale 3D catalogs. See this great Help Center article for more details on creating simple placeholder cakes in Finale 3D.

 

Hopefully this helps!
Neil

[DraperNormous]

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Thank you, Neil.  Your example is very helpful.  Between your info and Finale’s manual, I think I’ll be able to make my own library, albeit mostly just placeholders.

 

Is there any repository of consumer effects where I can put these after I’m done?

 

Regarding which consumer effects you should target, there are very few large consumer distributors in the Northwest.  Victory Fireworks in WI has a NW warehouse in WA.   They sell primarily Brothers and Pyro King.   Download the ‘Victory Fireworks West’ stock list, and you’ll get a list of which Brothers and Pyro King fireworks to focus on.

 

Thanks again,

Roger

[Neil]

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There isn’t currently any online repository for sharing effects, but you’re not alone in wanting something like that. I hope we can eventually have a place where we can share our effects like that, but for now, one way to share effects is just to copy/paste the full VDL text. Alternatively, you can export your My Effects or Per-Show Effects list to send to others, but admittedly, neither of those options offers much in terms of organization or convenience.

[Barehm]

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Two comments:

 

1) I built out a “Community Library” Google Sheets document last year, but it fell by the wayside with other priorities. I’d be willing to give ownership to a set of others if there’s interest in trying to maintain it.  Maybe I was too ambitious about the goal of tracking more metadata than VDL.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tsA5V5laZCikZh0EsxEjJMLMiOl1NZ9eaapP13lCIlg/edit?usp=sharing

 

2) Could we get a poll setup about which product catalogs users want prioritized for Cake/VDL creation?  I saw some debate in the Nov 2023 Cakes thread on this as well. I think there’s regional preference for sure, but have no clue how it shakes out across the entire user base.  Brothers cakes are very popular (available?) in the WI area.

 

[PyroBunny]

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Community effect sharing needs to be integrated directly into the finale3d UI. nothing else will get user traction.

 

Look at how easyeda does community designed parts for electronics. Literally millions of user designed parts have been shared and you can easily search for them in the UI and share them. the “user contributed” library parts here in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LDbo-jFqj0&t=90s

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