"Big Buck Bunny": Blender Animation

Premiering on the internet this week is "Big Buck Bunny". The movie is special because it was modeled, rigged and animated in a free open source 3D program called Blender. This animation really shows off what the application can do.

The environments display beautiful color and lighting and texturing, we see great examples of fur, water, FX animation, rigging and smooth animation. The animators were also able to create some pretty funny emotions in the characters. It has a great story that will keep you entertained. 

The project is entirely Open Source, if you would like to learn more check out bigbuckbunny.org. You can learn more about the project, browse through galleries, download the files (oh yes, you can actually download the actual models and play with them), and its also where you can also purchase the DVD, a good idea as sales of the DVD goes to help produce more projects like this. 

The idea of Open Source is really nice. The script is available for programmers to enhance and therefore, new and more powerful versions of Blender are always available to you. I often encourage my classes to check it out. The program is free....the only cost however is the learning curve. I taught myself Blender earlier last year and visited the Blenderwiki site to access some pretty helpful tutorials. This Blender tutorial will show you the basics of the navigation. 

Give it a shot. The Blender program can be downloaded off of the Blender.org site. 

Cheers to the group that created "Big Buck Bunny", well done.