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

Hi Community!  I am Roger from Ferndale, WA. and have been a pyro addict most of my life.   I do one show a year (guess the date), and as I am sure you all know, it gets bigger and better each year!  I did my first pyro-musical in 2014, but now with all the Pro-line effects, I can no longer visualize it all in my head.  So, this is my venture into Finale 3D.  I can’t wait.

Hi Will, as described by Ulf Werner it is more easier than expected as is enough to only get a different effect duration on the output file. I can confirm this works.   Thank you Ulf Werner, so according to your suggestion I need to copy the effect to my library many times (for each duration) and just modify effect duration to get things working?

Hey guys, will and i talked about it long time ago. It works just with the right duration which you assigned to the effect in your F3d library. In the moment where you import a shw file into autoshow creator of explo and setting up the “box nr”(rail) as a wave flame, the software recognize the imported duration and assign the small letter into the ignition group column automatically.   Will maybe we could talk to explo to use the hazard column for it. As the ignition group column where explo write this small letter to recognize the right duration for the flame output is for the normal receivers that what you mean normally with the hazard column. We are able do use this to deactivate lines by the small letter which we assigned to them. Explo allows only values from a-z in this column. As in F3d there is no limitation for this column we could make a warning dialog for the “export firing system script file” dialog where the user will get a warning if there is a value which isnt “a-z” before the export starts. If you agree i will try to force explo to implement recognizing this column during importing shw file into the autoshow creator software.   KR  

Hello Pyroteo,   I remember the Explo firing system having this capability, but if I remember correctly there was some problem with it. I can’t remember if the problem was just a difficulty or a show stopper. The conclusion I had reached at the time was that the group/duration information was not represented in the SHW file and therefore external software like Finale had no way to export it. That conclusion may have been incorrect, or the situation may have changed since then. That was a long time ago.   1) Look at the definition of the SHW file in https://finale3d.com/documentation/explo-script-file-format/   2) Try exporting a test file from Finale and then modifying the SHW file by hand with a text editor to achieve the duration specifications that you want, and test to make sure the modified SHW file achieves the result you want with the actual fixture.   3) If you are successful with (2), then it is likely we could provide a way to control and export the information you entered manually from Finale, within the app.   Will

Thank you so much DrewFinale, you can also download “Explo X2 Autoshow” tool (from https://www.explo.at/en/software/pc-ansteuerung/x2-autoshow.html) adding a new line (e.g. BOX 1 CH 8), then right click on “Option” cell and set device as “Liquid” (this means X2-Wave) and trying to set a group value you can see opening times changing. This is also for macros (e.g. CH31).  

Hi PyroTeo, I didn’t know this was possible using the Explo firing system. We’ll look into it and follow up soon.

Hey Jenca,   Vulcan isn’t shipping very much product, so there isn’t much demand for their sims. If you any have trouble creating specific effects, post them here and we’ll give you a hand.

  Walker Pyrotechnics wrote: Has there been any updates on this? Will we be seeing new consumer cakes in our catalogs soon?   Yes, we recently published simulations hundreds of new Racoon and Wizard items. At this moment we are working on Fire Factory and Great Grizzly. Next we plan to make major improvements to the Spirit of 76 and Dominator catalogs.

  PyroTeo wrote: I am encountering the same issue. Is the bugfix on the beta version only?   The fix was included in the 2023.03.16 (March 16, 2024) beta release. So, if you’re having the issue, you can install the March 16th beta release or any release after.