Idea: add support in Meshroom for distributed computing

[ar...@aramburu.org]

Hello !

I noticed that processing pictures takes many hours in my old, slow computer, despite my GPU (Nvidia GForce GT710).

And then I had this idea: maybe it is possible to add to Meshroom support for distributed computing; there are open source frameworks for that, such as Berkeley's "boinc" or the ones listed here: https://awesomeopensource.com/projects/distributed-computing

Then we, the collective of meshroom users, could help each other, by having a new exec mode: after local, extern (render farm), we would have "distributed".

And one could configure in meshroom if/when one wants to share some procesing power with the community.

What do you think of such idea ?

Greetings,

Ariel//

[Fabien Castan]

That would be a nice project.

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[Kirk M]

This would be similar to what Sheep It renderfarm does https://www.sheepit-renderfarm.com/

There are quite a few issues to contend with:

- All photos are needed to generate the point cloud. So each computer would have to have a full set downloaded. Transfer time (both up and download) plus storage could make this unfeasible for a lot of people. Plus those sets would have to stay encrypted on each computer (since they're proprietary data).  SheepIt encrypts all of their render data so it is possible.

Data retention on each node would have to be set incase you need to process again (don't want to have to reupload/download the photos each time). Most people are not going to want to hold someone's large project for a week or more.

So just focusing on this issue, you're essentially just sending your entire job to another computer, it's still going to take a bit of time to process the entire job (hours or days).

- Unlike animation where each frame can be rendered on a separate computer (and there are ways to chunk a single frame to multiple computers), that's a very complex problem to solve with photogrammetry software.  As far as I know, only Agisoft's Metashape handles distributed photogrammetry, but their software is $3500/node.  And I believe it's designed more LAN use because of the improved speeds (although I do see they offer cloud distribution, but again that would require a very fast upload to push a few thousand images).

Being able to do this would allow the processing time to drop (once the photos are distributed).  Only large projects would benefit from this model.

I wish this was more affordable and easier, I've got quite a few older PC's that aren't being used and would love to occasionally fire them up to speed up my processing.

Every few months I do a search on distributed photogrammetry in the hopes that something new has come along.