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Big Buck Bunny Now Online!!

97

Just a little over two years after the release of Elephants Dream, the Blender Institute have today released their second phenomenal accomplishment: Big Buck Bunny. Aimed at further developing Blender by providing it with great new animation tools and high-end fur rendering (both available in the recently released Blender 2.46), it will undoubtably put both Blender and Open Source in general on the radar of more 3D hobbyists and professionals around the world.

You will find in-depth information about the project on their new website www.bigbuckbunny.org, and more importantly, you can download both the full version of the movie in HD quality and all the production files right now!

To everyone involved: respect!

About the Author

Avatar image for Bart Veldhuizen
Bart Veldhuizen

I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Head of Community at Sketchfab.

97 Comments

  1. Wow! MUCH better than Elephants Dream. Head and shoulders above it. Qualifies amongst the best pixar short films in it's wit and clever gags. Loved it!

  2. OMG! Its pretty slow :P

    I couldnt even connect to the german mirror, and the italian is 23.9 KB/sec...
    /me wonders how many is leeching by now :P

  3. A hearty congratulations to everyone involved. You too Bart, thanks for the news!

    I'm very impressed with what the fellows at the Blender Institute at Amsterdam have been able to achieve - especially the new features!!!

    Massive, massive achievement. Amazing stuff.

  4. Whoa blender.org just went down then went back up again.
    Everyone wants a piece of BBB :D

    A really really big thankyou to the developers for putting Blender on the (professional) map.
    You have completely raised the bar on open source!!

  5. Awesome, ive seen it twice already (once at the adelaide SIGGRAPH presentation last night)
    But ill be downloading the movie and of course the production files, cant wait to see those.

    Good to see you back for this article Bart, its a good moment in Blenders history.

    Blender rocks.

  6. NICE! I love it! Extremely well animated; I'm impressed with the fur and the water... man, what was the rendering time on that field? Sheesh. That's amazing...

    The musical score is very cool, too... haha, I really like the butterfly's theme...

    Oh man, I just can't explain how much I like this... the quality is intense...

    I feel sorry for the little butterflies... the evil creatures who hurt them... good goin', Bunny Boy! :-D

    Why do that bunny's facial expressions remind me of Nathan?

    The focal blur on that falling piece of fruit was incredible...

    The animation of the leaves was amazing...

    Even the credits are extremely funny and entertaining... I like the butterfly that lands on Ton's name... somebody did well to arrange for that. :-D

    The little chinchilla is so funny when he runs... he keeps leaning further and further backward until he's almost falling over... I feel sorry for him... wasn't really a bad sort...

    All in all... I loved it... I'm speechless... not as good as Elephants Dream (nothing could be... I am SUCH an Elephants Dream nut) but EXTREMELY good nonetheless. Awesome, awesome, awesome... five stars...

  7. Just wanted to say: the best movie yet!!! I was so amazed with it that I gathered around the whole family and we watched it twice in a row! Movies like this are going to give blender lots of good attention.
    PS: I also have to say that I like the new file structure (Compared to Elephants Dreams).

  8. Unsettlingsilence on

    Wow! Really good work. The short is excellent. It has some nice laughs. The tools produced for it are amazing and have changed my artwork. Mad props to all the production team. Great work!

  9. Fantastic Job! I loved every frame! Im downloading now to spread the love that is Big Buck Bunny! and Blender.

  10. Ton and BBB crew very well done.

    I think that the Blender Institute is really on to something, with the current project improvement pipeline to see what the needs of the artist are and then making changes to the code so the Artist can focus on the creation. It started first with improvements for Animation and now adding Game creation, I can only guess that Live action to CG will be added to the next project, filling out Blender as one of the Best DCC tools available and always getting better.

    Thank you

  11. niice!!

    imho story-wise way better than the overly serious and arty, not to say pretentious, elephants dream.

    the animation is just stellar. 5 thumbs up from alpha centauri!

    btw: there's a digg article waiting to be dugg up. spread the word!

  12. About 50 MB into the download for 720 res version I got this message from the USA mirror:

    "Service Temporarily Unavailable

    The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later."

    I guess I'll do that. Looks like we've put quite a load on it!

  13. What a cool movie :D, it was great!
    Now I have that soundtrack in my head all the time... Does someone know whether there's a 'pure' soundtrack as well? :D

  14. Awesome ! Just awesome !

    That's a big step towards imposing Blender in the professionnal world !

    Character & world creation, modeling and animation is just so well done ! Very professionnal ! Respect !

  15. Great work! Very funny and well made. Awsum graphics and animation. One thing could be better, though. Few scenes could have been a little bit shorter for a better rythm and dynamism.
    Congratulations to the entire BBB team :-)

  16. This got posted like 2 hours before the DVD got delivered...sometimes being across the pond is sad. The few moments I've snuck watching during work are totally worth it, though. Awesome!

  17. **TOTAL RESPECT!**

    You guys HAVE to watch it in Full HD, the lower resolutions didn't do the work full justice.
    I had to watch it *5* times in a row just because it was that dauntingly pleasing to watch.

    I bet this could come out together with Elephants Dream as a Blu-Ray and become "THE"
    Demo-CD to Demo HD-Tv's and Blu-Ray players in the stores, simply because I've never
    seen such a clean noise-free computer animation on ANY Blu-Ray disc yet. Amazing stuff.

  18. Seen it and love it. Complete story line with lot of actions. Congrats!

    Such great work should be put into my 3D short movie collection.

    Cheers!

  19. Might I say, this is such an improvement from Elephants Dream, in just 2 years! Praise to BBB for its incredible character animation, fluid sim, and score! I'm so happy !

    I love how Morgenstern made more than one theme on this one. Really nice

  20. It was a great eye candy but I thought the story could have used more work. I like the flow of Elephant's Dream better.

    Anyway, this is about showcasing Blender's capability and the visual quality of the film is fantastic.

  21. Congratulations for the release BBB movie, and the movie was awesome. I hope more movies to come.

    I'd notice that the bigbuck bunny site down? It says "500 Internal Server Error"? Why was that?

  22. The DVD was waiting for me in my mailbox when I got home last night. I watched it over dinner. Man, I have not seen such a great short, 3D or otherwise in a long time! I was not prepared for how funny it was. The extra scene after the credits really caught me off guard - I was sipping a drink at the time and nearly choked!

    Seriously, this is amazing. I've been watching it over and over. I still have a few DVD extras to explore.
    Respect and admiration to all on the Peach team!

  23. Some of the bunny's poses seemed odd and awquard.... and the last scene was unpleasant... but overall it was great! Awesome work guys!

  24. I have to say that the *spoiler* killing of those butterflies was horribly gut-wrenching. I usually don't mind violence in entertainment, but that made me feel awful. Fortunately, it wasn't enough to spoil the rest of the story... but I think I'll warn my family before I play it for them.

    On a positive note, I'm going to have to watch it a hundred more times... I downloaded all three resolutions in two different formats, and I even have it on my iPod. It's excellent, from start to finish, visually, audibly and conceptually. I can't say enough to praise the team. Congrats guys, and thank you!

    [My spoiler text should be white; you can select it with your cursor to view it, if you really want. If I'm wrong, and the text is visible against the background, please remove my comment -- I don't want to spoil anything!!]

  25. Yearh its a fantastic movie (got the DVD here, hah! :P) And now blender.org and bickbuckbunny.org is down, because the movie is SO GREAT! We all love your guys.!

  26. Btw, just like Sven, I would like to know if the soundtrack is pure bunny-made ? Coz I think I have heard somthing bit alike it before...:)

  27. I saw it! It's awesome! Great job to everyone involved!
    I'm really wanting to download the production files, but the server seems to be down. :(

  28. Can somebody pleas post the DVD to linuxtracker.org as the web site is down? Will there be a Dirac release?

  29. nice the server is down. I saw the movie earlier today. It was awesome. I'm buying the dvd on my next paycheck, hopefully there will be some left by then.

  30. Master Danix on

    I already saw the movie in youtube,it was awesome,now downloading the 720p movie through bittorrent

  31. Sad but at the same time really funny. Love the shot (no pun intended) at the end of the credits.

    Hanging out for the DVD iso to see the documentaries and tutorials.

    As soon as I can get some cash in the bank (almost impossible with all the price hikes down under, New Zealand) I plan to dish out some financial support to the blender community in general by way of purchase of the Elephants Dream DVD (assume it's still available for sale) and BBB and a donation to blenderunderground a site not to be missed and there seem to be a few other potentially good sites coming through. So much to see and so little time.

  32. This is of course a big achievement on the technical side of things and it seems that people like it and it should help with promoting blender - so well done...! As a movie I found Big Buck Bunny quite upsetting - it's like if Tarantino decided to make a 3D movie. You just keep wondering: "Why...?". I still love Elephants Dream and this is the one I'll keep showing to people when I promote blender. To a certain extend this really is a matter of taste and should not be taken personally. Sorry that I can't join this party... Enjoy the release!

  33. wow! It's beautiful!

    btw. don't yawn about slow servers, that's why they invented torrents! i downloaded it with an average speed of 150 kb/s

  34. Big Buck Bunny is great! I just got the DVD yesterday, there are two DVDs in the case with tons of extras (the live edit blend is cool). The outtakes are hilarious (my favorite is the last one)! I really liked the version where they show the animatic, the blocked animation, the view in blender and the final all simultaneously. My boy and I have already watched the movie several times. Great job!

  35. Sacha: finally, after a watch, you right*, the Rinky's design works very well when he is animated. :)

    Congratulations again!

    bye

    *http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=121837

  36. Outstanding job! Kudos to the whole team! Also, as a second note: its very much easier (faster and lighter on the servers) to get this via torrent. Its a pity we couldn't render a film like this in a torrent-like fashion.

    Bob

  37. Sorry. I didn't liked it at all. I think the guys watched 'For the birds' a few times too much... The whole story isn't original at all! It's just a rip-off of the aforementioned short from Pixar. Replace the nasty sparrows by the 3 rodents and the main character with the rabbit and you're done! Same story! Just in an utter vengeful version. Instead of the funny way that the sparrows punished themselves through their actions, the rabbit just takes vicious revenge - a bad role model! Also a complete character (the sparrow from the beginning) including facial expression and animation was simply copied!
    Elephants Dream instead was original art! Had much more sophisticated animations (esp. facial anims), had a lot of different scenes, had characters with voice roles, and it could inspire your fantasy!

    Malcolm

  38. congrtatulations, ive been waiting sooo long. I enjoyed it, but ED was definately more interesting. of course, depends on the audience, and this was catering to another audience or at least, another mood. children and old people will enjoy this one more than ED. but children and old people tend to no be that interested in ED. (statistically, no offense. I enjoyed both. 3 of 5 for BBB and 4 of 5 for ED and im expecting 3 of five for Durian too.) hehe. its all good, this is just the beginning.

  39. Hooray!!! Excellent film! er, Excellent render!!! & excellent .avi! This is cool!

    Wonderful story, excellent work, and I am still giggling. You guys did a beautiful job, and I rate this a 100% all around! By the way, I LOVE short animations. Some of the best movies made ever are under 10 mins. I sometimes prefer the shorts at the beginning to the actual film. This ranks with the best I've seen.

    Thank you all for your wonderful work.

  40. I'm in the process of coverting it to a Flash Video (SWF) because my processor sucks major chuncks. In fact, it's amazing I can get Blender to work at all.

    Anyway, I was wondering if you guys would have any objection to me uploading it to my DeviantArt account (http://sespider.deviantart.com/) for all to see? I'll add a simple (but info giving) preloader to it. I'll also be happy to send the SWF file to you guys to post add to the Downloading page.

    I'll of course give you guys FULL credit for the video and all. I just want everyone possible to see this and help promote the heck out of Blender. ^_^

    E-mail me your reply in case I miss it here.
    Oh, and I'm using Flash 8 (Flash CS3 is a pain)

    God Bless,
    Richard

  41. This was so much easier to follow than orange!! I love it! i lauged the most when i first saw the rodents throwing the nuts at the bunny because the chinchilla kept pulling nuts out of nowhere 1 by 1

  42. Yeah that was a really awesome short film!!! 100 times better than Elephants Dream!

    I loved it.
    Congrats Peach Team on producing such a great short!

  43. Great movie. Thank you very much for motivating us Blender users and to inspire us, what we could do one day.
    I don't know if you guys are now stressed and empty in your heads ;) *lol* but please continue this great work and hopefully we will have in 2009 another great work to marvel at.
    This movie is such a great way to show people not knowing Blender, what this software can do and how powerful it can be, if some creative and hard working people use it.

  44. Lack of transparency

    I'd like to buy the DVD, but shipping price for world regions are not reported.

    I don't want to pay 30 or more bucks for shipping, please be more clear about.

  45. For some reason I have problem with all my production files the faces of all the characters are all messed up and weird stuff like that.

    What can I do?

  46. Wayne C Fox III on

    to see something like this makes me even more proud to be a blender user
    this is simply beautyful and i got a chuckle or two out of it aswell

  47. @Malcolm &Indiworks: I agree: great technical side of things - I like the way it looked - kudos to whoever did all those backgrounds, groundwork, and world scenes :)

    However, the story could have probably been polished a bit more, maybe of made it flow a bit better. It ALMOST worked, just a little slow and violent for my taste :)

    anyways, I know how much time the project peach team put into this, and ,regarding graphics, I'd like to say , Great job! - it made blender stand out THAT much more :) !
    a

  48. I find this short film beautiful and reminds me a little that studios "Blue Skye"> Rabbit.

    BIG BUG BUNNY is very funny and I loved the animation characters. That given my desire to make me a short film ..
    I show you the beginning: lol:

    http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=fvny2G2tVeU&feature=related

    Big up the rabbits and Bibis a whole team.
    Especially for Nathan , give me a good laugh in the videos (blog) ..
    I imagine it in the costume of the big rabbit in the film :lol:.

    Thank for all :-)

  49. My daughter is 10 years. When she watched the video she said "This is not a bunny, it's a person!!"
    :-)

    Congratulations... and thanks a lot! :-D

  50. congrats to ton and the rest of the team , great movie , blender is getting better and better keep up the good work. and bart good to see you back ;)

  51. There's a bug right before the squirl snaps its fingers when they're throwing nuts at Bunny, his finger reaches through the trunk.

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