3L has been in the wild for 2 weeks now, so I’m expecting to see some work from new users appearing online soon.

Since launch the artificialeyes crew have kept themselves busy. ExiledSurfer has been posting plenty of new content, example clips and screencast tutorials. I particularly enjoy the talking head screencast recorded from within 3L, using the Apple webcam to drop a little talking head into the preview window.

3LU Sophomore: Capture an Object + Feedback from professor thrill on Vimeo.

These videos have been collected into a Thrill University section of the site. This is being supplemented with live tutorials, the first of which happens 12 hours from now (GMT1300, Thursday) on the 3LU page (which will even remind you via email when the session is about to start). I’m going to be there to increase my 3L knowledge, it would be great to see some other CDMers as well.

There’s also a 3L channel on CDMo’s favorite online video service, Vimeo. CDM makes a little appearance in the 3L channel, as I was able to finally edit the bulk of the “3L Sessions” videos we shot with Michael in Perth last year. There’s over an hour of video in the 3L Sessions album, covering the history of 3L, and an extensive tour through the interface and capabilities of the software. Through the magic of Vimeo, these are all downloadable, so you can use them to guide your first steps with Thrill.

The response to our 3L Giveaway was amazingly extensive, and also very exciting to see the names and websites of so many visualists from around the world.

So we’ve collated all of those email addresses, and with a little help from some atmospheric noise we chose the winners.

Grand Prize (3L Pro License)

Hiltmeyer

Runners-up (3L Student/Education License)

.lov.
sull
Toby Dixon
Korhan Erel

Comment Winners

The comments response was so overwhelming that artificialeyes offered to award an additional 5 education licenses to commenters, chosen semi-arbitrarily by artificialeyes:

Winner for BEST THRILL PUN: vj decoy - VL ONLY 3L!
honorable mention: LordBanjo - 3L = Luminous Lantern Lust!

Winner for BEING 1337: nausea - in case i win the license i will make it run on my linux box:)
honorable mention: dmos.tv - finally generative synthesized visuals at our fingertips, why not try that with a mo-cap suit

Winner for BEST SENSE OF HUMOUR: Willy - and on the 7th day God said. “Damn, tomorrow’s Monday.”
honorable mention: J.E JIM - Lets do this. I want to put this software to work at church!

Winner for DREAMING THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM: memo - another comment in the sea of comments…
honorable mention: PreyStereo - There would be only one thing I would want more than a free license to Thrill…a free license to Thrill AND a cookie. Nah, forget the cookie.

Winner for SWITCHING: vj bonk - Nice! I hope that I am picked, I have been anxiously awaiting this release for a long time, Arkaos just does not cut it anymore this seems like a step in the right direction!
honorable mention: Pao - Hi, I’m a VJ and normally using Modul8. Few days ago I managed to use this software with my ipod touch. Let’s rock!

All of the winners will receive an email with instructions directly from artificialeyes within the next 48 hours on how to register their copy of the demo version. Thanks to everyone who entered, and to those who missed out: you didn’t miss out at all, really, because the Thrill Store is now open! You can download the 3L demo and give it a spin. Congratulations to the artificialeyes team. They’ve been working their butts off, and it will be great to see what happens when 3L hits the wild.

I’m currently editing several hours of 3L footage we shot with Michael last year, so you’ll be able to have expert help when coming to terms with the software.

Enjoy, and when your 3L output starts hitting the web, please tell us about it!

We’ve been avidly following the development of Thrill for quite a while now, and are very excited to hear from Michael that the commercial release is this week. But first, a little housekeeping: As a grand opening for the 3L store, CreateDigitalMotion has 5 copies of the software to give away! Much like the Beta giveaway, the rules are simple.

Your machine will need to meet the 3L minimum specs:

2GHz or faster Intel Core processor
MacOS X 10.4.9 or later QuickTime 7.0.4 or later
2GB or more of RAM
CoreImage capable AGP, PCI Express or Intel graphics processor with at least 256MB of VRAM w/ OpenGL hardware acceleration.
Minimum Screen Resolution 1440 x 960 (which therefore excludes the macbook)

… and you’ll need to leave a comment on this post in the next 48 hours.

In return, 4 winners will receive a 3L Student - single-machine - license (worth €150) , and one will receive 3L Pro , which is a 3-machine license (worth €200) and includes native uDMX support, for controlling VMS or other DMX hardware.

After the competition closes, I have it on good authority that The Wait Is Over, and 3L will be available for all and sundry to try out and purchase with Much Abandon. I also have several hours of footage of Michael taking us on a detailed tour of Thrill at ByteMeFest in Perth last year, so I’ll be going on a mad editing binge in the hope of having this available to help out those who download the demo later this week.

In the meantime: Hit the comments, check out some samples from the 3L Loops series on archive.org, and visit the 3L site for more information.

Update: Entries are now closed. Thanks to everyone who entered. The volume and quality of comments has been overwhelming! It’s really fantastic to see all of these readers come out of the woodwork. I think we’ll have to give more things away so we can hear from you all (Software and hardware developers, you know where to contact us…).

In the meantime, winners will be announced this time tomorrow, to coincide with the 3L store launch. So if you don’t win you’ll be able to try out the demo and even buy a copy!

This just in from pixel-burninators and soon-to-be-purveyors of fine realtime 3D visual performance software, artificialeyes: VJ Loop Century seem to be claiming that 3L is their “home made realtime visual software”, which is “available as a freeware for unlimited downloads !”.

They then go on to, erm, reproduce without attribution, Peter’s “How awesome is 2008 (3L! Whoo!)” post, even though it explicitly names artificialeyes as the creators of 3L.

I’m not sure what else to say about this. Michael has plenty more though.

artificialeyes are keeping us updated on the impending release of 3L (current status: Soon), and while I’m still in “getting my studio in order” mode in the lead-up to the “2008 massive VJ geek-out and CDMoFest” and unable to play with new toys, CyberPatrolUnit has posted some great demo videos (and followup), showing us some of the places that 3L may be able to take us.

3L and Lemur at LAX from CyberPatrolUnit on Vimeo.

Exciting? Maybe a little. I still have lots of 3L video to edit from Perth last year, and I’ve promised Michael that I’ll have some videos ready for the official launch. Stay tuned!