The Blender Institute’s Big Buck Bunny is a remarkable achievement for the open movie movement.

Big Buck Bunny is the latest production of the Blender Institute, a non-profit studio in Amsterdam that’s part of the Blender Foundation, which runs the Blender 3D open source software project. To create the film, the Blender Institute invited a small team of the best 3D artists and developers in the Blender internet community to come together in Amsterdam from October 2007 through April 2008 and create a short animated film.

“Buck Bunny” is a fantastic showcase of Blender’s capabilities and should leave little doubt that Blender is a serious (and free!) alternative to expensive 3D software like 3D Studio Max and Maya. It keeps getting better and better with each new release; tons of new features have been added since the last time I featured Blender here a little over a year ago.

One of the best things about thid film is that as an open movie it’s licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license, meaning that anyone is free to watch it, copy it, screen it or remix it anyway they like. You can download the film in a variety of high def formats, along with all of the Blender files used to create it, but please also consider buying the DVD. Proceeds from all sales will be used to help fund the next Blender Open Movie Project.