Tutorial 5 - Installing our pip package

In this tutorial we will use venv with 3ds Max. The venv tool allows us to configure different independent Python execution environments on our machine, each having its own set of installed pip packages.

The complete documentation for venv can be found here

Note:

as of Python 3.6, venv is the preferred virtual environment tool for Python.

Create and Activate a Virtual Environment

The Python embedded with 3ds Max includes the virtualenv tool, and we will be using that. Open a command prompt in the 3ds Max Python directory (typically something like C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 202X\Python) and create a virtual environment:

<maxpath>\Python\python.exe -m venv d:\myenv

Then activate it by running:

d:\myenv\Scripts\activate

At this point you will see the name of your virtual environment prefixing the command line:

(myenv) PS D:\myenv>

Note: It is important to start 3ds Max from this same command prompt that was used to activate the virtual environment, as that command sets up some environment variables that 3ds Max will detect.

Start 3ds Max:

3dsmax.exe

From this moment we can use pip to add packages inside the virtual environment, from the virtual environment command line:

pip install somepackage

And we are able to import the installed package in 3ds Max:

import somepackage

Complete Example

Open a command prompt in your virtual environment directory:

PS D:\myenv> .\Scripts\activate
(myenv) PS D:\myenv> pip install numpy
Collecting numpy
  Downloading numpy-1.21.0-cp37-cp37m-win_amd64.whl (13.9 MB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 13.9 MB 3.3 MB/s
Installing collected packages: numpy
Successfully installed numpy-1.21.0
(myenv) PS D:\myenv> & 'C:\Program Files\3ds Max 2022\3dsmax.exe'

Now inside 3ds Max, you can inspect sys.prefix to see that Python is using the virtual environment:

>>> import sys
>>> sys.prefix
'D:\\myenv'
>>> import numpy