FINALE DB QUESTION
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Pyro ProsJoined: Aug 2025 Posts: 7 Location: Hugoton, Kansas, United States 
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NeilFinaleJoined: Jun 2024 Posts: 14 Location: Southern Iowa NewcomerHey Pyro Pros!
Right now, product requests can take anywhere from one week to many weeks to fulfill as we’re working hard to build out more core features of the platform, but we expect to have that time frame down to a week or less in most cases soon!
Pyro ProsJoined: Aug 2025 Posts: 7 Location: Hugoton, Kansas, United States NewcomerHello Neil. Wass just wondering if you had a possible ETA for the sims I requested? Im sorta at a standstill on building my seqwuence for a pyromusical for the city in which I live without them. Ive tried creating my own on the VDL bar and I just cant get it to work right just yet. I understand you are swamped, I was just curious is all. Thank you for everything you all do!
Best,
Arick Miller
Kansas
NeilFinaleJoined: Jun 2024 Posts: 14 Location: Southern Iowa NewcomerIt’s hard to give an accurate estimate right now (due to a lot of work being done in that regard) but rest assured that I do see your requests on the lists, and work is being done to make sure we can manage product and sim requests better and faster!
In the meantime, one helpful tip for being able to jump straight into scripting before you have high quality sims is to use placeholder effects where you can. As long as the duration of the effect is reasonably accurate, you can at least script it in the show, and from that point, you can put as much time or effort into making the visual aspects more closely match reality as you want.
The simplest form of a placeholder is just an effect you create that has the name and duration of the product you’re making a placeholder for. Example:
1″ 28s Ground Flare
This would produce a small ground flare that is 28 seconds long (the “Ground Flare” part is just so there’s some effect to see that isn’t too distracting, and because having some VDL effect is required).The next step up for a placeholder would be something like a cake that might have an accurate shot count and (roughly) accurate size/caliber, but without any specific firing patterns or appropriate visual effects. Something like:
1″ 30s 25 Shot Placeholder Cake
This would give you a 30 second cake with 25 shots. The break effects will all be multicolor peonies since that’s what Finale 3D uses as a break pattern if you specify “Placeholder”.Check out this documentation article for some more details about making placeholder cakes:
https://finale3d.com/documentation/creating-or-importing-a-simple-placeholder-cake-simulation/
Of course you can add as much more detail to these placeholder-style sims as you want, as you learn more VDL or have more time to work, but simple placeholders like this are relatively quick to make and at least give you some visuals even though they don’t necessarily match their real-world counterparts. You could make different placeholder effects like these to represent the different cakes in your show and then script as you normally would. They won’t look the best, but they’ll at least give durations in the timeline and allow you to script the show, and the placeholders can easily be swapped out for better looking effects later.
hardin4019Joined: Apr 2026 Posts: 3 Location: Pittsburgh, PA NewcomerHow many cakes, consumer or pro line, are there videos of them, and how complex? I’ve been tinkering with making VDLs for my own cakes missing from FinaleDB. Maybe you can crowd source some of what you need.
The wording on some of mine were tripping me up. Like 1″ Green Meteor to Dense Silver Palm w/ Chasing Crackle.
Pyro ProsJoined: Aug 2025 Posts: 7 Location: Hugoton, Kansas, United States NewcomerPyro ProsJoined: Aug 2025 Posts: 7 Location: Hugoton, Kansas, United States Newcomerhardin4019Joined: Apr 2026 Posts: 3 Location: Pittsburgh, PA Newcomer -
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