BitWrk – distributed rendering for Blender 0.6.4 released

Jonas Eschenburg writes:

I’m very happy to announce the release of BitWrk 0.6.4.

What’s new in this release?

This maintenance release contains the following changes:

• GPU rendering selectable in BitWrk settings panel
• Tile complexity is now an advanced option
• Bugfix: Selection caused error on render
• Bugfix: Workers kept using up all available space
• Bugfix: Memory leak when saving exact same file twice

What is BitWrk?

BitWrk is a distributed rendering service that integrates into Blender as a render engine and supports peer-to-peer, as well as local and network rendering. Most features of Cycles are supported. The software is Open Source (GPLv3) and absolutely no registration is required. The peer-to-peer service is novel in that it doesn’t use a typical credit system, but instead employs Bitcoin, the famous cryptocurrency.

Do I need Bitcoin to try BitWrk?

No, there are several computers providing peer-to-peer rendering free of charge. Just set a maximum price of BTC 0 for your rendering jobs.

Do I need to register to use BitWrk?

No, BitWrk requires absolutely no registration. The first time you start the software, it generates a secret key (that remains safely stored on your computer) and a public account ID.

I already have a fast GPU. Will BitWrk still accelerate my renders?

Yes, with BitWrk you can always use peer-to-peer rendering in addition to local rendering. Since 0.6.4, it is easy to select GPU rendering for your local worker, as seen in this video:

The CPU/GPU selection feature is still a little experimental and I would love to hear if it works for you!