It is a pretty well know fact that open source 3D graphics tools like Blender is not just a hobbyist software anymore. The fifth official open movie from Blender Foundation "Gooseberry" is already under active development. In that respect, Ranadheeran is one of its kind. It's probably the first "open" movie to come out of India, created with the sole purpose of showcasing the capabilities of open source 3D graphics tools such as Blender, GIMP etc.
Watch Ranadheeran: India's first fully "open" animation movie
At a time when filmmakers and producers doling out huge money for animation work in movies, a group of techies from this small South-Indian city of Coimbatore have proved that quality is achievable using low-cost open source software and local talent.
A three-minute-and-52-second-long video trailer, titled 'Ranadheeran', made by Realworks Studios was released on YouTube few weeks ago and has been quite an internet sensation since. Only hand-made animation is used for the movie and no motion capture, the creators claim. The primary tools used were Bender, Audacity, and GIMP. Apart from that, the Realworks team have also developed their own Render farm scheduler software, which is not open source. [Watch it on YouTube, read more about it on The Hindu]