''Big Buck Bunny'' (code-named Project Peach) is a 2008 short

computer-animated Computer animation is the process used for digitally generating animations. The more general term computer-generated imagery (CGI) encompasses both static scenes (still images) and dynamic images (moving images), while computer animation refer ...

comedy film A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending ( black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the o ...

featuring animals of the forest, made by the Blender Institute, part of the

Blender Foundation The Blender Foundation is a Dutch nonprofit organization (Stichting) responsible for the development of Blender, an open source 3D content-creation program. The foundation has distributed the animated films '' Elephants Dream'' (2006), ''Big Bu ...

. Like the foundation's previous film, '' Elephants Dream'', the film was made using

Blender A blender (sometimes called a mixer or liquidiser in British English) is a kitchen and laboratory appliance used to mix, crush, purée or emulsify food and other substances. A stationary blender consists of a blender container with a rotating me ...

, a

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

application for 3D computer modeling and animation developed by the same foundation. Unlike that earlier project, the tone and visuals departed from a cryptic story and dark visuals to one of comedy, cartoons, and light-heartedness. It was released as an

open-source film Open-source films (also known as open-content films and free-content films) are films which are produced and distributed by using free and open-source and open content methodologies. Their sources are freely available and the licenses used meet th ...

under the

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

Attribution 2.5 license.

Plot

The plot follows a day in the life of Big Buck Bunny, during which time he meets three bullying rodents: the leader, Frank the

flying squirrel Flying squirrels (scientifically known as Pteromyini or Petauristini) are a tribe of 50 species of squirrels in the family Sciuridae. Despite their name, they are not in fact capable of full flight in the same way as birds or bats, but they a ...

, and his sidekicks Rinky the

red squirrel The red squirrel (''Sciurus vulgaris'') is a species of tree squirrel in the genus ''Sciurus'' common throughout Europe and Asia. The red squirrel is an arboreal, primarily herbivorous rodent. In Great Britain, Ireland, and in Italy numbe ...

and Gimera the

chinchilla Chinchillas are either of two species (''Chinchilla chinchilla'' and ''Chinchilla lanigera'') of crepuscular rodents of the parvorder Caviomorpha. They are slightly larger and more robust than ground squirrels, and are native to the Andes mounta ...

. The rodents amuse themselves by harassing helpless creatures of the forest by throwing fruits, nuts, and rocks at them. After the rodents kill two butterflies with an apple and a rock, and then attack Bunny, he sets aside his gentle nature and orchestrates a complex plan to avenge the two butterflies. Using a variety of traps, Bunny first dispatches Rinky and Gimera. Frank, unaware of the fate of the other two, is seen taking off from a tree, and gliding towards a seemingly unsuspecting Bunny. Once airborne, Frank triggers Bunny's final series of traps, causing Frank to crash into a tree branch and plummet into a spike trap below. At the last moment, Frank grabs onto what he believes is the branch of a small tree, but discovers it is just a twig Bunny is holding over the spikes. Bunny snatches up Frank. The film concludes with Bunny being pleased with himself as a butterfly flies past him holding a string, at the end of which is Frank attached as a flying kite.

Production

Following '' Elephants Dream'' (2006), ''Big Buck Bunny'' 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. Work began in October 2007. The film was funded by the Blender Foundation, donations from the Blender community, 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 A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyric ...

. It was rendered on

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, t ...

grid computing Grid computing is the use of widely distributed computer resources to reach a common goal. A computing grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve many files. Grid computing is distinguished from ...

facility

Sun Grid Sun Cloud was an on-demand Cloud computing service operated by Sun Microsystems prior to its acquisition by Oracle Corporation. The Sun Cloud Compute Utility provided access to a substantial computing resource over the Internet for US$1 per CPU- ...

. As in ''Elephants Dream'', 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 A particle system is a technique in game physics, motion graphics, and computer graphics that uses many minute sprites, 3D models, or other graphic objects to simulate certain kinds of "fuzzy" phenomena, which are otherwise very hard to repr ...

, UV mapping,

shading Shading refers to the depiction of depth perception in 3D models (within the field of 3D computer graphics) or illustrations (in visual art) by varying the level of darkness. Shading tries to approximate local behavior of light on the object ...

, the render pipeline, constraints, and

skinning Skinning is the act of skin removal. The process is done by humans to animals, mainly as a means to prepare the meat beneath for cooking and consumption, or to harvest the skin for making fur clothing or tanning it to make leather. The sk ...

. Also introduced during the project was approximate

ambient occlusion In 3D computer graphics, modeling, and animation, ambient occlusion is a shading and rendering technique used to calculate how exposed each point in a scene is to ambient lighting. For example, the interior of a tube is typically more occluded ...

. These features were released to the public with Blender v. 2.46.

Release

The film was officially released in an April 10, 2008 premiere in Amsterdam while online movie downloads and files were released on May 30, 2008. High-resolution,

stereoscopic Stereoscopy (also called stereoscopics, or stereo imaging) is a technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by means of stereopsis for binocular vision. The word ''stereoscopy'' derives . Any stereoscopic image is ...

, high-frame-rate versions of the film were released in 2013 by Janus Kristensen's

Big and Ugly Rendering Project Big and Ugly Rendering Project (BURP) is a non-commercial volunteer computing project using the BOINC framework for the rendering of 3D graphics that has been in hibernation as of 2020. The project website currently shows the status as "extend ...

running on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing platform. The film was followed up with an open game titled ''

Yo Frankie! ''Yo Frankie!'' is an open source video game made by the Blender Institute, part of the Blender Foundation, originally scheduled for release in August 2008. It is based on the universe and characters of the free film produced earlier in 2008 ...

'', in August 2008.

Characters

The main character (called Big Buck Bunny) was also used in short films created by Renderfarm.fi: ''What is Renderfarm.fi?'' (2011) telling about the advantages of

render farm A render farm is a high-performance computer system, e.g. a computer cluster, built to render computer-generated imagery (CGI), typically for film and television visual effects. Origin of the term The term ''render farm'' was born during the ...

s and ''BBB loves CC'' (2012) promoting Creative Commons licences. The bunny's voice was given by Jan Morgenstern, who was the composer of a ''Big Buck Bunny'' movie soundtrack. Frank the flying squirrel is also the

player character A player character (also known as a playable character or PC) is a fictional character in a video game or tabletop role-playing game whose actions are controlled by a player rather than the rules of the game. The characters that are not control ...

in the Blender Institute's 2009 video game ''

''.

References

External links