Hi, Drew. I have one of the following questions regarding to the rules:   1. The spreadsheet contains all the details for the 10 cakes you will need to create to enter the contest. Q: Is it okay to create all of the real life cakes or just choose one?   2. Using only Visual Descriptive Language (VDL), make simulations for all 10 cakes listed in the spreadsheet. Your objective is to create simulations that look as similar as possible to the videos of the real-life cakes. The limitation is that you may not use the effect editor. This means that the effects in each cake must be human-readable VDL. In addition to visual similarity (effects, angles, firing pattern, timing, etc.), make sure that your cakes match the information provided in the spreadsheet. For example, if the spreadsheet specifies that a given cake has a size of 1.25″, be sure the cake you create is 1.25″. Q: How can I do that if I create a cake in all 10 cakes in the spreadsheet?   Thanks in advance, AARONTHEPYROMAN

Hello! My name is Neil and I’m a UX and brand designer, web developer, photographer, and pyrotechnician from southern Iowa/Northern Missouri. I shoot with COBRA equipment and over the past couple years, I’ve traveled all over the Midwest to attend and help out with pyro conventions, club shoots, demo nights, and everything in between! I’m also an avid Finale 3D user.

Great! Glad you got it figured out!

Thank for your reply Neil!   It was indeed lft i needed to edit, thank you!

When you combine individual effects to create a cake, the pre-fire time of the cake (specified with “PFT” in VDL) will match the first effect you used in the cake. For example, If you’ve set a 1.5 second pre-fire time for an individual effect (“1.5 PFT ” in VDL) and then use that effect as the first 5 shots in a cake, the cake should have a pre-fire time of 1.5s. If you don’t specify a pre-fire time for an effect, default values get used instead (based on the caliber of the effect).   Something to keep in mind while experimenting with pre-fire times and cake VDL syntax is that your individual effects might use the “PFT” syntax for specifying pre-fire time (like the “1.5 PFT” example above), but when you combine multiple effects like that together into a cake, the cake VDL description will changed those to use the “LFT” syntax (for lift time) so Finale knows that it refers to the lift time for that particular shell/effect rather than the overriding pre-fire time for the whole cake (which is what “PFT” refers to in the combined-effect cake VDL).   If instead of that, you mean that your cake timing doesn’t exactly match the timing as you initially laid out on your timeline when you created the cake, that is because Finale automatically randomizes break times, cake shot timing, and shot trajectories to make everything more realistic. You can turn these settings off in the Render Settings by going to File -> Render Settings (or by pressing Ctrl + Shift + J ) and unchecking “Break time randomness” and/or “Cake shot timing randomness”.     Changing these settings can be good for testing and getting really precise timing, but it’s good to remember that real pyrotechnic devices are generally not that precise, and the margins of error intentionally added by Finale’s randomness features are quite similar to real life.

When Combining single shots to create a cake, it doesn’t appear that it follows the pre-fire times that have been set. this means the timing in the finished cake are different to those that were used to create it. Is this a bug, or is it a VDL limitation?

thank you. It seems your point is correct. We’re also looking forward to the release of the Effects Editor tutorial. I also think that adding various sample effects to the “standard effects” is a very effective method. Please consider this positively.

Hey Curtis, thanks for posting. Sorry, we’re not offering any Finale 3D promotions for Black Friday / Cyber Monday.

I’m just wondering if there will be a Black Friday sale on Finale… thanks.

  YukiN wrote:     Have you checked this place?　　　　　https://finale3d.com/documentation/vdl-effect-glossary/   Hey YukiN, thanks for replying to this topic. There are two different ways to edit an effect. The first way to right click and select ‘Edit this item (VDL)’. The second way to right click and select ‘Edit in effect editor’. When editing VDL, the glossary of VDL terms is very useful. When editing an effect using the ‘effect editor’, changes are made by directly modifying the structure and values of the various parameters. I think what NEC is looking for is help with the effect editor.