Big budget animated films are all the rage. Pixar, Disney & Dreamworks have all made a name for themselves in this genre – but how would you like to take a foray into the world of pixelated pictures with something like the film you see above? Far from being a big budget production, Big Buck Bunny was actually made using open source software that you can download for free yourself if you visit Blender.org.
Download and installation is pretty straight forward. What's more daunting by far is launching the package and trying to figure out your way around the interface. If you're familiar with 3D animation software it'll all look pretty familiar – and I am told, more intuitive than most professionally available packages as this has been designed by the kind of people who will use it. But for newcomers there's a great tutorial on wikki that will see you from noob to, well not exactly pro as the title suggests, but certainly able to start doing some simple modelling and animation. It's a tough slog, but persevere and you'll be amazed by what you can create.
I love Blender. Though, to be fair, it has taken me years to get even mildly proficient with it. It does take a lot of drive to get to 'pro,' but once you start to understand the Blender way of doing things, it is an incredibly efficient package and capable of very impressive things.
There is a major drive in Blender just now to make it a better tool for visual effects as well (adding CGI elements into live action footage). I've been playing about with it in this capacity recently and the results have been very good. You can also use it to make models and then have them fabricated somewhere like shapeways. I even use it just for video editing :)
Posted by: Sympodius | Tuesday, 27 March 2012 at 10:44 AM
Thanks for the comment & the tips :)
Posted by: Kate Russell | Tuesday, 27 March 2012 at 10:59 AM