Why can’t I create a cake after “chaining” that effect?

[AviatorRuss]

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Hi,

 

I’ve only been using Finale3D a few days…but I ran into this problem that would have been good to find in the forum search. There is some serious vertical learning going on here! To have an “official” answer from someone knowledgeable would be great.

 

End result: I want to create a 20m high, large, white, random with +/-15deg from vertical, strobing, comet cake that lasts for ~30sec.

 

Sooo…I created a vertical comet effect using VDL, got the single shot look that I wanted, then copy/paste that 10times, and advanced each with a .2sec offset. So know I have 11 comets that shoot straight up, separated by .2sec. Then I changed the tilt by 3deg on each so now I have my +/-15deg. Then I “chained” that effect for 55x and that gave me about 30″. It was exactly the look I wanted.

 

The problem…I tried to make a cake out of that entire chain…and I kept getting an error box that said something like, you don’t have an effect selected, select your effect and try again. But I most certainly had the entire chain selected.

 

So…I think…You can either create a CHAIN or a CAKE from your effects, but you cannot create a CAKE from a CHAIN? 

 

(BTW…I’m certain I’m not using the scripting commands available to me correctly…like Duplicate/Sequence/Reorder, etc. I’m pretty sure there is “a couple clicks….” way to do what I’m trying to do vs copy/paste 60times!)

[DrewFinale]

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Hi AviatorRuss, welcome to the Finale 3D community and thanks for posting on the forum!

 

For only being a few days into your Finale 3D journey, you’re doing quite well!

 

You are absolutely correct; you cannot create a cake from chains. Not to worry, there’s no need to start over. You can simply un-chain the items on your timeline and then combine them into a cake. First, select the relevant items on the timeline, then go to Script > Chains > Break apart chain (or press Ctrl+Shift+H on your keyboard). Then, you can go straight to making the shots into a cake by going to Effects > Combine as cake effect (or press Ctrl+P).

 

For future reference — best practice is to only chain together individual items in Finale 3D when you plan to do the same thing in real life. In other words, chain items in Finale 3D when you plan to connect the items together using a single fuse in real life. When building cakes, try using Groups instead. Groups is an option in the Script menu that allows you to visually consolidate and organize sets of items on the timeline and in the script window.

[AviatorRuss]

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Perfect, Thanks Drew! Now I understand what “chain” means in application…that was a very helpful couple of paragraphs.

 

Also…for future readers…Script>Sequence, Script>Duplicate, Script>Align, (etc…lots of functions in the “Script” header) contain powerful “copy/paste” and “array” type tools that are WAAAAY faster than MANUALLY editing individual effects and CTRL-C/CTRL-V 50 or 60 times.

 

Cheers,

-Russ

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