Hi effreek, welcome to the Finale 3D forum!   We are not the developers of Glow so I can't really speak to the history or on any technical aspects. If Glow supports exporting effects, it may be entirely possible to convert to a Finale 3D format.   All Finale 3D effects start out with VDL. A typical workflow is to use VDL to get a close as possible and then tune with the effect editor as needed. One benefit that VDL offers is speed. Another is that VDL can represent a multishot item like a cake, where as the effect editor currently only supports individual effects. To make a cake using the effect editor, the effects in the cake need to be customized individually, and then multiple custom effects can be combined into a cake.   You can copy any "node" of the "tree" structure in the Finale 3D effect editor using the copy and paste options in the 'Actions' menu that appears when you mouse over a node. Once you have a node copied, you can paste it into another application like Notepad or Excel to inspect the raw data. We don't have documentation on the effect editor structure yet, so copying and pasting modes and inspecting the data is the best way to learn. Copying and pasting modes is also one of the best workflows for efficiency building custom effects.

Just curious on the glowfireworks consumer visualization tech and how it came about and if there was any link to current software like finale3d.   Seems like there is already a consumer effects database somewhere that would benefit everyone if it could easily be converted to finale3d VDL.   Thoughts, comments? I already have a semi manual working system to pull the effects "JSON" like format from a glow visualization instance but I can't seem to get a good conversion working without having to go to the custom effects instead of vdl. ( I have been using chatgpt with a scrape of vdl terms to try and get close)   Also on that note is there a way to paste into the custom effects tab of finale3d? Any documentation on the structure? I want to make a converter but can't without understanding the underlying structure. (Maybe I should make this question a separate discussion.)

Excellent, that Ace Pyro video is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks Drew!

Hey Pyro_326840000, welcome to the Finale 3D forum! In Finale 3D, you can create a StarFire script that is either a "Standard" (fully automatic) script, or a "Semi-Automatic" (SequenceFire) script, not a script that does both at the same time.   When creating a fully automatic script, the Track column in the script window should remain blank. When creating a semi-automatic script, every line in the script window should have a Track value.   Defining sequences is generally quick and easy because Track values can be set for any number of lines of script simultaneously. For details, see: Dividing a show into sequences for semi-automatic firing using the “Track” field.   To learn about the Track values specifically needed for StarFire, see the Semi-automatic firing (SequenceFire) section in Table 2 of the StarFire documentation article.   For a StarFire/SequenceFire tutorial video, check out Basics and Sequenced Shows in Finale 3D (the demo on setting Tracks begins at about 25:17).

Does anyone here have experience scripting for the StarFire system and how I should use the "Track" functionality in Finale to combine sequences? Does every cue need a track value? Or just the scripted sequences I want to step through?

Thank you Drew, that will be used in the future.

Good catch! Another solution is to select the four "drivers" on each wheel and press Ctrl+H to chain them together. Once the drivers on a wheel are chained, Finale 3D will only assign them a single Pin/E-match, which most likely mirrors the construction of the wheels in real life.

Found the issue. I am using spinning wheels in my show. The code for my wheels is not in the inventories so I used one from a list and the chosen one requires an e-match for all four sections of the wheels. That is three extra e-match per wheel, 9 wheels gives 27 extra e-match. I changed the product code to one that requires just one e-match and everything is correct now. A new lesson learned.  

Max. e-match per setting is set to 1. Just to see the number of labels it wanted to print, 725 or 752, Finale does want to give me 752 labels. I have gone line by line comparing my Excel script and it matched perfectly with the Finale script. So I really do not know what to do. This is a show for our FW company's social on the 26th. I really need to nail this.

Oh wow now I see it. Not sure how I missed that, I guess was so focused on finding a button that I overlooked it lol. Thanks.