Big Buck Bunny (code-named Peach) is a short computer-animated film by the Blender Institute, part of the Blender Foundation. Like the foundation's previous film Elephants Dream, the film was made using Blender, a free software application for animation made by the same foundation. Click here to watch the ten minute film.
Overview[]
Work began in October 2007. The film was officially released in an April 10, 2008 première in Amsterdam while online movie downloads and files were released on May 30, 2008.
The film was followed up with an open game titled Yo Frankie!, in August 2008.
Plot[]
The plot follows a day of the life of Big Buck Bunny when he meets three bullying rodents, Frank (the leader of the rodents), Rinky and Gamera. The rodents amuse themselves by harassing helpless creatures of the forest by throwing fruits, nuts and rocks at them.
After the deaths of two of Bunny's favorite butterflies, and an offensive attack on Bunny himself, Bunny sets aside his gentle nature and orchestrates a complex plan to avenge the two butterflies.
Technical information[]
Following Elephant's Dream, the short movie is the first project by the Blender Foundation to be created by the Blender Institute, a division of the foundation set up specifically to facilitate the creation of open content films and games The film was funded by the Blender Foundation, donations from the Blender community (see Blender Foundation Members), pre-sales of the film's DVD and commercial sponsorship. Both the final product and production data, including animation data, characters and textures are released under the Creative Commons Attribution License. It was rendered on Sun Microsystems' grid computing facility, Sun Grid.
Improvements to Blender for Big Buck Bunny[]
As in the original Elephants Dream movie project, Blender developers worked extensively to improve the software in accordance with the needs of the movie team. Improvements were made in hair and fur rendering, the particle system, UV mapping, shading, the render pipeline, constraints, and skinning. Also introduced during the project was approximate ambient occlusion. These features were released to the public with Blender v. 2.46.