Is it possible to install new modules in python to be used inside maya ?

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francois bonnard

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Jan 31, 2019, 3:33:31 PM1/31/19
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My env system is windows 10

If yes where can I find a tuto / process for that ?

Thanks for your help folks

F

Joe Weidenbach

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Jan 31, 2019, 3:54:02 PM1/31/19
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yes and no.

Python in maya on windows does respect the PYTHONPATH environment variable, so you can either set this in your user account, or for more flexible use run maya from your command line with manually installed modules.

If you’re looking for something like pip, it’s pretty simple — you can download get-pip.py from this site: https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/installing/ , and then run it with mayapy instead of python.

Now, the somewhat bad news. Virtualenvs with Maya and windows aren’t really a possibility (at least from my experience), so anything you install with pip is going to be system-wide, and will basically require you to install it for all local machines. Because of that, I’ve found the PYTHONPATH approach much more flexible, if more of a pain (as you have to manually install pretty much everything you want, which with things like numpy/scipy is a hassle). The upside is, a lot of times you might not actually need maya, and for those types of tasks you can work as normal.

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Marcus Ottosson

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Jan 31, 2019, 4:23:35 PM1/31/19
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Based on the question, I’ve got a feeling “PYTHONPATH” and “Virtualenvs” is a little on the advanced side with regards to what Francois is looking for.
If you’re able to install anything with Python, then it’d at least be safe to assume a working knowledge of pip, in which case this should help you get started.

Windows

$ pip install Qt.py --target ./
$ set PYTHONPATH=%cd%
$ start "" "c:\program files\autodesk\maya2018\bin\maya.exe"

Linux

$ pip install Qt.py --target ./
$ export PYTHONPATH=$(pwd)
$ maya

Where pip install Qt.py is your everyday Python module installation procedure, followed by --target ./ which means “Install to the current working directory”. Then, set/export makes the module known to Python, and finally Maya is launched.

From within Maya, you should then be able to say import Qt

--target could be given any path, like a global directory of some kind where you keep all of your Maya modules, like c:\pythonpath. Then you can set the environment variable PYTHONPATH globally such that they are available whenever you launch Maya.

Additionally, if pip fails with e.g. SyntaxError: invalid syntax when you install Qt.py, then you’re using pip with Python 3 and have a little longer to travel to your end destination.


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francois bonnard

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Jan 31, 2019, 5:42:27 PM1/31/19
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Thanks Markus & Joe

I appreciate your support.

Here is what I did :

1. Install python 2.7 in C:
2. I have found a whl version  of scipy and numy from Eric Vignola in this forum
3. python -m pip install "numpy-1.13.1+mkl-cp27-none-win_amd64.whl"  did the trick
4. In Maya : 

import sys
sys.path.append("C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages")
import numpy
import scipy



That's it. 

Now the big ML part has started :-)

I guess Joe has a point with using mayapy to install pip and then install numpy (because I definitely don't see myself compiling source for windows)


PS for Markus : I have just read your "constructive" comments in an old post to David regarding his version of MayaSublime. 
Has he implemented your remark ? 

(David if you read me, congratulations for this forum)

François (just a guy in the universe)
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Joe Weidenbach

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Jan 31, 2019, 6:27:09 PM1/31/19
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Yeah, my post was intended to be a bit more advanced (apologies about that), primarily because windows makes things harder for customization, at least with Maya and other DCC apps. Python 2.7 on windows still uses msvc-9, where Maya, Houdini, etc are now on custom builds with msvc-2015.  So, anything that needs C-level compatibility (numpy etc) has issues unless you use a custom compile of python.  Plain python _should_ work just fine (hence my PYTHONPATH recommendations).  With any luck, you won't run into issues with numpy (they've only accelerated certain parts with C to my knowledge), but if you do, it's going to likely be due to the binary incompaitibilities.

Also, where on linux and (I believe) macos, mayapy is just a shell script that sets up the maya environment for the system-installed python, on Windows it's a custom-built executable -- which I believe is due to the aforementioned compiler differences.

For general development and small-studio work, there are plenty of ways to get things running, so I'm glad the pip side worked.  It's more of a challenge when you want to roll things out to a larger audience, with for example a requirements.txt and as a pip module.  

As to simply getting things running for personal projects, I've had a lot of success in the past just copying the modules I need into my maya scripts directory.  It's much less flexible, but it works well, at least so long as you're not using modules that need C-level compatibility.  For those, I believe that you'd need to build a custom python install with the correct version of msvc, and then build the modules in question against that.  But, as I've said, for most things I've needed that level of python support for, I've found ways to get what I need out of maya for offline processing, and then can just use my system python with whatever modules I want.  This also has the side-benefit of keeping my maya code small and isolated, so that my maya install can pretty much be off the shelf.  With that said, that does add an extra layer of complexity.

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Robert White

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Jan 31, 2019, 6:45:25 PM1/31/19
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You can use mayapy instead of a custom python install when compiling modules for Maya. I've done this for quite a few extensions.

Also the easiest way to get pip running specifically for maya, is just `mayapy -m ensurepip` (at least for more recent versions)
On windows this will install it in c:\program files\autodesk\maya <version>\Python, so you'll need permission to write to program files, which is super annoying.
Its a fairly old version of pip so it might complain about things until you update it with `mayapy -m pip install --upgrade pip setuptools`

As mentioned though, building C-extensions is a bit more of a pain.
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Joe Weidenbach

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Jan 31, 2019, 6:47:59 PM1/31/19
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good call on mayapy -m ensurepip :) I’d not seen that one before, glad to know they’ve made it a bit simpler.

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