Night show: Casa Timis - Bella Italia

This page takes a finished night show apart. After reading it you will be able to build a title that wipes in, a word whose letters arrive one by one, and a waving flag from an animated path.

The baked show from the audience position, from takeoff to landing

The show at a glance

Item	Value in the show file
Length	About 205 s (205.03 s)
Drones	A 200-drone design. The Launch Pad holds 225, see the scene tree
Launch Pad	90 m by 10 m, 45 columns by 5 rows, about 2 m between neighbours
Show height	The Show element is lifted 40 m and turned 78 degrees
Music	One clip, from 0 to 147.46 s
Bakes	The project reached bake version 99. Baking often is normal

A bake is the step where the bake engine computes the real flight path of every drone. A slot is one point of a shape that a drone flies to. A channel is one row on the timeline, and a clip is a block of time on that row. See the Glossary for other terms.

The story

The show has three pictures and a landing:

1. A title card: CASA TIMIS and GRAND TOUR, in white and grey, then in the Italian colours.
2. The words BELLA ITALIA, one letter at a time, in red, with a tricolour line beneath.
3. A large Italian flag that waves in the sky.
4. The fleet lands with a green, white and red gradient across it.

The soundtrack is a remix of Bella Ciao. The first 20.75 s of the file are trimmed off, so the clip fills the show from 0 to 147.46 s. There is no audio after that, so the end of the flag and the landing play in silence.

The scene tree

The Hierarchy panel holds this structure. Names are as they appear in the file, typing errors included.

Launch Pad 1                     the fleet and the flight plan
Audio                            one soundtrack clip
Show                             lifted 40 m, turned 78 degrees
├─ Casa Timis Grand Tour         formation group, scale 1.3, tilted about 10 degrees
│  ├─ Casa Timis                 text, 115 drones, font size 16 m
│  └─ Grand Tour                 text, 110 drones, font size 12 m
├─ Bella Italia                  formation group, scale 1.4
│  ├─ Bella Italia - Original    text, 200 drones, hidden
│  ├─ Bellta Italia Text - Split formation group of 11 one-letter texts
│  └─ Rectangle 2                the underline, 25 drones
└─ Italy's Flag                  formation group
   ├─ Path 1                     animated flag, 200 drones
   └─ Rectangle 1 (copy)         25 spare drones, kept dark

A formation group is one picture. A Track clip flies the drones to all the visible slots inside one group, so each group above is one target.

Every picture has exactly 225 slots: 115 + 110, then 200 + 25, then 200 + 25. That is why the pad holds 225 drones. The two extra rectangles give the 25 drones beyond the 200-drone design a job. In the second picture they draw the underline. In the third they sit in a 5 by 5 grid, 11 m behind the flag, with a black colour and no colour clips of their own.

TIP

Hiding an element inside a group removes its slots from that picture. That is why the hidden Bella Italia - Original does not add 200 drones. Hiding a whole group in the Hierarchy only clears the view: Casa Timis Grand Tour and Italy's Flag are both hidden in this file, and the Track clips still fly to them.

The timeline, section by section

All the flight clips sit on the Launch Pad. Its Drones 1 channel holds the main plan:

Time (s)	Clip	Target
0 to 58	Takeoff	Casa Timis Grand Tour
58 to 100.25	Track	Bella Italia
100.25 to 170	Track	Italy's Flag
170 to 205.03	Return	Back to the pad

Drones 2 holds three protection windows. These switch off parts of the routing so a precise figure keeps its exact shape:

Time (s)	Clip	What it ignores
25.75 to 52.75	Freeze (No Avoidance)	Collision avoidance
72.75 to 91.5	Freeze (No Avoidance)	Collision avoidance
118.75 to 168.75	Algorithm Bypass	Collision avoidance, Up speed, Down speed, Max 3D speed

The Freeze clips are older clips saved in this show. Selecting one opens the same settings as an Algorithm Bypass clip. The timeline menu no longer offers Freeze, so in a new show add Algorithm Bypass and leave only Collision avoidance checked. See Algorithm Bypass.

0 to 24 s: liftoff in the dark

The Takeoff clip uses the default settings: Stagger launch on, Waves, Highest first. Two pad-level colour clips run from 0 to 23.75 s: a black Solid (one constant colour), and white Sparks (random flashes) that fade in and out over 2 s. Launch Pad colours paint over formation colours, so the whole fleet stays black with a light white twinkle while it climbs.

17 to 58 s: the title card

CASA TIMIS starts black. A pale Gradient (from #bababa to white) has Paint drones turned off, so it paints nothing alone. A Reveal (a moving wipe) from 24 to 55 s uses it as a colour source and wipes it in along a diagonal, with Softness 0.2 and a 3 s fade out. Gold Sparks run from 25.25 to 36 s.

GRAND TOUR moves in with keyframes. A keyframe stores a value at one moment, and the app moves smoothly between keyframes. From 29.3 to 32.8 s it slides from behind CASA TIMIS down to its place below. Its grey wipes in from bottom to top, starting at 30.75 s. A green, white and red gradient then wipes over it, starting at 33.75 s.

From 34.2 to 55.6 s both words turn on keyframes: 12 degrees one way, 12 degrees the other, then back to 0. The first Freeze window covers this, so avoidance cannot bend the letters.

58 to 100 s: Bella Italia

Red pad-level Sparks at 72% opacity run from 52.5 to 74.25 s and bridge the two pictures.

The letters of BELLA ITALIA swing upright and light up one after another

Each letter starts lying flat, rotated -90 degrees around X, and swings upright over about 7 to 8 s. BELLA starts at 69.5 s and each next letter follows 0.75 s later. ITALIA starts at 69.75 s with almost the same step, so the two words build side by side. All the letters are upright by 80.75 s.

Colour follows the same idea. Each letter has its own red Solid with a 3 s fade in, starting between 72.75 s (the B) and 78.5 s (the last A). All of them end together at 86.75 s.

A group-level Gradient from red through grey to dark red then takes over from 84.25 to 100.25 s, under white Sparks at 37% opacity. At 88.25 s a 1.5 s Reveal wipes the 25-drone underline in from left to right, in green, white and red.

100 to 170 s: the flag

The flag reveals in stages, then waves on its animated path

1. A pad-level black Solid fades in over 3 s from 97 s, so the fleet goes dark for the move.
2. The second Track starts at 100.25 s. Pad Sparks in green, white and red run from about 100.75 to 117.75 s, so the sky is not empty during the flight.
3. At 110.5 s a first Reveal wipes in part of the flag from bottom to top, using 54 slots.
4. At 118.75 s the full flag arrives. White rises from the bottom while green and red come down from the top, each in a 2 s wipe.
5. The path plays from 119 to 170 s. Colours hold until 177 s, with Sparks at 58% opacity from 123.25 to 144.5 s.

170 to 205 s: landing

The Return clip uses Assignment set to Same as start, so each drone lands on the spot it left. The clip overrides Min Separation to 1.9 m for this window only. A pad-level Gradient in green, white and red fades in over 4 s from 180.5 s and stays on to the end.

How each formation was built

Text split per letter

1. Add a Text element, type BELLA ITALIA, set Font size (m) to 18 and Drones to 200.
2. Right-click it in the Hierarchy and choose Split into characters.
3. Move the new letters into their own formation group.

Split shares the 200 drones by stroke length, so the total stays 200. Here the B gets 32, an A gets 21, an E gets 22, a T gets 16, an L gets 15 and an I gets 11. The original stays in the scene, hidden. See Text and fonts.

The group

Bella Italia scales everything by 1.4, so an 18 m font becomes about 25 m tall on the sky. Scaling the group keeps the letters and the underline in proportion.

Color priority is set to Children on this group, on the letters group and on the title group. With it, the group's colours sit under the children's. A black group Solid becomes a base, and each letter fades in from black. See Formations and groups.

Flag from a path

A Path stores a ready-made animation, with one flight line per drone. Path 1 holds 200 drones for 51 s, and its movement repeats, which reads as waving.

The element is scaled by 1.7 and moved down 32 m. That makes the flag about 115 m wide and 94 m tall. A slot never moves more than about 9 m from where it started, and never faster than about 4.2 m/s.

The Playback clip has a fixed length, so you only choose when it starts. Here it starts 0.25 s after the Algorithm Bypass window opens. See Animated paths.

Sparks and reveal colours

The flag colours use palette sources. Three Solid clips of 66 slots each (green, white, red) have Paint drones off. They only hold colour. Two Reveal clips tick them under Colour sources, one for the white and one for the green and red, so each area wipes in separately. Two slots of the 200 are left out and stay black.

Sparks in this show are kept quiet. Several clips lower Rate (/s) from the default 3 to 1, several lower Amount from the default 0.15 to 0.1, and four clips run below full opacity, between 37% and 72%.

What to copy

• Start every element black. A black base clip gives each fade and reveal a clean start.
• Use Children priority whenever a group base must sit under per-letter colours.
• Offset many small things. A step of 0.75 s across 11 letters looks choreographed and takes minutes to set.
• Go dark for long moves. A black pad clip with a few sparks hides a crowded transition.
• Keep every picture on the same slot count. If a design is short, add a dark block of slots.
• Protect only what needs it. The Freeze windows ignore avoidance and nothing else.
• Turn the pad with the show. The pad and the Show share the same 78 degree turn.
• Finish on a colour. The landing gradient closes the show after the last picture.

Flight limits used

Setting on the Launch Pad	Value
Horizontal speed (m/s)	6
Up speed (m/s)	4
Down speed (m/s)	3.5
Max 3D speed (m/s)	6
Acceleration (m/s²)	3.2
Min separation (m)	2

These values are from this show, not a recommendation for your fleet. See Flight limits and separation.

Bypass windows are your responsibility

Inside an Algorithm Bypass window, the checked limits are not enforced. Only bypass motion that you know is safe, and review it in Safety checks after baking.

Next

See a daytime show in BIAS 2026 - Romanian Flag - Smoke Show, or read Designing good shows.