CDMotion contributor vade sends word of some experiments he’s been doing with inter-application video sharing. The basic idea: start with live imagery in one place (like a Processing sketch, for instance), and feed those visuals into another app for adding effects, mixing, and output (like VDMX). Naturally, you’d want to do this without a performance tax.

vade’s solution – Mac-only – uses live visual capture to send the output of one tool to another, all on the GPU. Performance looks great, but the big problem is that the window has to stay in the front. Still, I can already imagine uses for this.

Source-ry [abstrakt.vade.info]

That’s just one approach, though. Could we eventually even have a full-blown inter-application visual routing solution, one that might work between apps, platforms, or computers? I can imagine a few approaches that might work, though performance is always the challenge.

Simple shapes with effective use of 3D mapping to a scaffold covered with semi-opaque scrims.

From French crew Exyzt, who also have released a minimalist Mac video instrument: Cowboy Bitmap.

via VJ.TV

Korg has just publicly shown this trio of tiny USB controllers in London, and they look very tasty indeed for live visualism – small and thin enough to fit along the lip of a non-pro MacBook or 13” PC laptop, but with advanced assignment features, scene editing, and other features. That keyboard would go nicely with the new GrandVJ’s MIDI assignment features… and that could leave another laptop routed into a mixer with a bigger controller. No word on pricing or availability, but we’ll be watching. Full details on Create Digital Music:

Korg nanoKEY, nanoKONTROL, nanoPAD: Super Tiny MIDI Keyboard, Controller, Pads

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!

The successor to ArKaos VJ, a staple in early VJ application history, is nearly here. GrandVJ just hit public beta.

GrandVJ is a complete, from-scratch rewrite of the app, with some new features — but still a nod to the simple, one-screen interface that made the original popular. You can now download a working demo, beta build (with some watermarks on output and other limitations) for both Mac and Windows. I have to say, I like the music keyboard interface and drag-and-drop-everywhere philosophy. At the very least, this could become the beginner-friendly VJ app a lot of people have been looking for. (That is, if it’s successful, I may have an answer for the "where should I start with VJing for something simple — and I don’t have a lot of time" question I get a lot, particularly on the music side.) It’s also got some generative and Flash-playing tricks I’ll be looking into. At the same time, I think it will be worth some constructive criticism. This field is also getting crowded — and users more demanding.

Watch for a more detailed preview from us soon, but in the meantime, you can go ahead and give it a spin and let us know what you think:

ArKaos GrandVJ Public Beta 1 [ArKaos Users Forum]

Previously:

ArKaos Rebuilds VJ Software From Ground Up: GrandVJ

eMotion - Basic particles tool example from Adrien Mondot on Vimeo.

We saw eMotion last year — it’s a Mac OS-based 3D tool for particles and visual effects, with physics modeling, Wacom tablet control, input from sensors and OpenSoundControl, a text engine, and integrated Quartz Composer support. In other words: it’s a friendly tool for making pretty motion imagery, designed to be usable by performers.

Creator Adrien Mondot has new videos up and a beta available for download. (An Intel Mac running Leopard is required.)

eMotion on stage from eMotion for Animation on Vimeo.

More videos, including screencasts on features like forces and Quartz Composer:

Vimeo screencasts

Details on the software and a download link:

eMotion

The description is a bit hyperbolic ("a new way to define movement"?) given that a lot of this is indebted to 1970s "augmented reality" research by Myron Krueger and physics simulations by, well, a lot of people. (Particle systems were specifically invented by Bill Reeves of Pixar in the early 80s. Ahem — Khaaaaaaaaaan!) I don’t think that takes away from the coolness of this — on the contrary, I think acknowledging historical lineage helps demonstrate why the new, accessible, personal rendition of that is valuable. But there is a lot here that’s done very well. It’ll be fantastic to watch it develop.

Likewise, it’s interesting to see these tools (and vvvv, also mentioned today) working with proprietary, platform-specific technologies. There are certainly some advantages to hooking into the Mac’s Core Image and other app development tools (see Quartz Composer, VDMX, etc.), or Windows’ DirectX (as with vvvv). I think the challenge for people interested in open, cross-platform development is to make things just as usable and visually consistent with OpenGL and cross-platform APIs.

Beatesthesia Custom Visulizer from olly gore on Vimeo.

Beatesthesia is a new open-source, cross-platform VJing/music visualizer application programmed in Processing. It sports some interesting design decisions, including an audio-reactive user interface. Its an interesting idea, and is certainly pretty and definitely novel. At first glance, I didn’t like the blinking UI; it struck me as being far too distracting, but, after second thought, it’s a pretty decent way of conveying content and disambiguating a UI elements purpose. Well done. Check out the Vimeo video and home page to get a feel for its capabilities.

Beatesthesia strikes me as being more of a music visualizer than a fully featured VJ application, but it’s open source, which means it will grow as it pulls in a dedicated user base. Beatesthesia’s website also hosts shared projects, so you can explore other users visualizations. [Ed. For what it's worth, it looks like more than just a visualizer to me -- especially as you start to edit the ways in which it works and make more elements "performable" -- and if you don't like this specific implementation, you could certainly code your own in Processing! Anyone performing with this or building something similar, let us know. -PK]