BitWrk 0.3.0 "Mercury" is out!

Hi everybody!

I am not a graphics artist, but a software developer from Germany and I would like to introduce to you a project that I have been working on in my spare time since last year, based on an idea I had in 2011. I humbly think it could be very useful for the Blender community, so it is important for me to involve you as early as possible.

The project is called BitWrk and it is supposed to be an open marketplace for computing power. It works like a stock exchange. There are buyers and sellers, but not for stocks: for computing tasks. Everybody can be a buyer, or a seller. Using Bitcoin as currency, this can be accomplished as a real community project.

Translated to Blender, this means that rendering times can be reduced drastically by harnessing the power of the internet, for a very small price, without registration, and on a per-use basis. It also means that everybody can refinance their expensive computers by providing rendering service to others - for money. It doesn’t stop at Blender rendering, there is other software that can profit from huge amounts of computing power. But Blender is my primary use case.


The screenshot shows Blender dispatching a rendering job tile by tile to the BitWrk service.

BitWrk is currently not as easy to use as I would like it to be. I apologize for that and I’ll be enhancing it every day. Still, it is important for me to get your feedback in this phase!

The software is still in heavy development, but it is working already, and it is completely Open Source. There is no payment processing yet, so no actual money can be made or lost. Only Cycles Rendering is supported at the moment. Please see the homepage for information on how to get you started.

Please have a look at http://bitwrk.net! And, if you actually happen to like the project, please support it by donating some spare CPU cycles, making the experience for new users so much better!

I happily support everybody who would like to try out BitWrk.

Cheers,
Jonas

My “Blender PC” mines scrypt coins when I’m not rendering a project, so I think this is a pretty good idea. I’ll be watching!

This sounds pretty cool actually. I can’t spare any CPU cycles right now but I really like the idea of this, I think it can become big in the future :slight_smile:

Very cool idea! I will give it a try… So is it CPU only?

This is a fantastic idea! Looking forward to seeing where it goes.

This sounds like a pretty good idea, you have all the “miners” doing something useful instead of just computing hashes. A lot like renderfarm.fi, except with a monetary incentive.

Hi indyjo, I got it compile after change path to /usr/lib64/python2.7 in env-vars.sh.
Using the Blender addon i got error:

http://www.pasteall.org/49233

or:

http://www.pasteall.org/49234

Setup is really not for the noobs,
cheers, mib.

Hi, packed execs for client and Blender addon.
Follow the readme, in short words:
Start client > ./bitwrk-client -extport 8082
Start slave for share > python3 blender-slave.py --blender /Path/To/Blender/blender
Watch in your browser with > http://localhost:8081
Install Blender addon render_bitwrk.py with Install from file in Blender UP > Addons

This is compiled for Opensuse 13.1/64, don´t know if it work on other distributions.

Some ideas:
Start Browser from Blender addon (like netrender addon).
Start slave from Blender addon.
Permit checkbox with settings.
Change name Concurrency to Tiles.

Cheers, mib.

Hey, that’s some cool feedback in just so little time! Thanks everybody!

el_dib:

Very cool idea! I will give it a try… So is it CPU only?

No, it’s not! Unfortunately, my Laptop is equipped with an AMD card and, as I understand it, Cycles is currently nVidia only. So I haven’t tested it. But there is nothing preventing anyone from using the GPU.

I am not sure if CPU and GPU rendering results are 100% identical, though. Repeatability of tasks is going to be necessary for verification of work.

Pesho:

This sounds like a pretty good idea, you have all the “miners” doing something useful instead of just computing hashes. A lot like renderfarm.fi, except with a monetary incentive.

Exactly. Although I like the renderfarm.fi project, I think publishing everybody’s renders is not such a good thing.

mib2berlin:

Using the Blender addon i got error

Yeah, sorry about that. You got connected to a misbehaving client. BitWrk will need some reputation system to prevent that.

Thanks for the instructions and the binary! Linux users, have a look at this!

mib2berlin:

Some ideas:
Start Browser from Blender addon (like netrender addon).
Start slave from Blender addon.
Permit checkbox with settings.
Change name Concurrency to Tiles.

  • A good one! I’ll have a look at how they did it.
  • Will need further work, and as long as the biggest problem is forwarding a port to the local machine, I think I’ll leave it for experts for now.
  • Yes! Needs some UI work, but it would be cool to have BitWrk client features directly in Blender. Also: current balance. But most important is to start the browser.
  • Agree!

All in all, some great motivation to continue my work! Thanks! :smiley:

DejaVo :slight_smile: i would love to try it

So go ahead! If you chose a complexity of 8 Giga-Rays (the default), your Blender rendering work will be accepted by at least one server I am paying for (and whoever is selling at that moment).

There are instructions on http://bitwrk.net and I’ll gladly help anybody to get it to work.

Both threads merged. No need for a new thread for any old update

This is a really really good idea. I think. I’m a bit wary with bitcoins. Possibly allowing for actual money to transfer as an option would not be such a terrible idea. Probably a lot more work and other issues would happen. Needless to say, once I get a rig built and have some stable internet I’ll be giving this a shot. At the moment just using my poor little laptop.

BitWrk does not absolutely have to use Bitcoins as currency, but it makes things easier, especially with micro-transactions. Out of curiosity, what aspect of Bitcoin is it you’re worried about?

By the way, your poor little laptop might like the power it gets from BitWrk, even at the current state ;).

Looks cool. I may need to try this.

My desired use case is extremely large, complex, still frame renders for print.

Well, I haven’t done any lately. But my next project is a ~10m x 2m mural to be printed at … say… at least 72 dpi and preferably 150dpi. So we are talking a 10800 x 54000 pixel render… a lot of tiles… tens of thousands…

The filesize of the output PNG would probably be 800MB+, I don’t want to even think about the RAM it would use before that stage.

I imagine in any normal situation I would have to render this in many parts manually and then combine them later. Do you think BitWrk is appropriate for a job of this type? It would certainly make things a lot simpler and faster.

Why not simply do it for free like Bit Torrent? To my mind if you’re leaving your system up and available to assist rendering efforts then you are paying. You’re paying with the electrical costs, the wear and tear on your system.

FXR is correct. I participated in vSwarm and my electric bill went up about $50.00 in one month. So the compensation for leaving your computer on may have to at least match that value. I would have no idea how to redeem a bitcoin. Paypal deposits might be a better way to go. Or at least should be offered as another payment option.

Good point! That’s exactly what I’m saying. If there was a monetary compensation, there would be more people dedicating their hardware. Which is good, because it will make BitWrk an extremely powerful service. For many amateurs the investment in expensive hardware is prohibitive, and just buying some computing power when they need it might be the more economical option.

The buyer profits from computing power right when he/she needs it, without having to invest in hardware.
The seller gets compensated for the wear and tear and the electricity and even makes a small surplus.
The server is financed by a fee on the transactions.

Price of computing power is governed by the rules of supply and demand.

As a seller, you set the minimum price for your service. So, if prices drop below the point where it doesn’t make sense anymore to offer the service, you will simply not accept any further transactions.
I also see the same difficulty with Bitcoin, but I think it will change. There is a lot going on in the scene. On the other hand, there is nothing preventing Bitwrk from running on Euros or Dollars if Bitcoin doesn’t take off. It could use Paypal or similar for withdrawals/deposits, but fees would be much higher.

Version 0.4.1 of BitWrk, the peer-to-peer rendering system was just released!

The new version concentrates on Blender users, featuring usability and stability enhancements, an optimal tiling algorithm and support for Blender 2.72(a).

Binaries for Mac and Windows, as well as the source code can be found here: https://github.com/indyjo/bitwrk/releases/tag/v0.4.1

Blender 2.72a rendering a scene from project Gooseberry using BitWrk 0.4.1: