Windows Install Tips

A quick guide to installing Python wheels on Windows.

This guide assumes no Python installation is available on a Windows machine, and your firewall allows downloading .whl files. This guide also assumes your Maya version is 2014-2017 (these use Python 2.7.x); adjust versions as necessary for earlier Maya versions. This guide will use 2016.5.

Some background

• Maya’s installation directory should not be disturbed! Keep Maya’s directories as clean as possible.
• Maya 2014-2017 use Python 2.7.x
• %MAYA_APP_DIR% is an environment variable that specifies where Maya’s preferences are stored. On Windows, this defaults to C:\Users\username\My Documents\maya. I will assume this configuration.
• %MAYA_SCRIPTS_PATH% is a variable Maya uses to find scripts to source at startup. A typical default is %MAYA_APP_DIR%\2016.5\prefs\scripts. I assume you know what paths are in your scripts path.

The Basics

The easiest, most direct way to get a native library for Windows is to download a pre-built binary. This avoids the need for a C(++) compiler and avoids unnecessary virtual environments.

To demonstrate, we will use Numpy and Scipy, two libraries useful for heavy number crunching and data filtering. Both of these libraries require C(++) compilation and Scipy depends on Numpy, so they are perfect for this method.

How To

• Download numpy-1.9.2-cp27-none-win_amd64.whl and scipy-0.16.0-cp27-none-win_amd64.whl (or *win32.whl if on 32-bit Windows and an earlier Maya version).

• Rename the downloaded files from *.whl to *.zip and open them in your favorite zipping program (Windows Explorer, Peazip, 7-zip, etc.).

• Extract the library directories (numpy or scipy) into a new directory for storing Python binaries.

NOTE: this directory cannot be in a Maya scripts path (such as %MAYA_APP_DIR%\maya2016.5\prefs\scripts or any path specified in the environment variable %MAYA_SCRIPTS_PATH%). I recommend something like %MAYA_APP_DIR%\deps.

• Add this new path to your Python environment within Maya.

• For general use in Maya, in userSetup.py put the line at the top:

  import os, site; site.addsitedir(os.path.join(os.path.expandvars("$MAYA_APP_DIR"), "deps"))
  

• For use within a package, make a new “deps” directory in your package root, put numpy and scipy in there, and in your package’s __init__.py put:

  import os, site; site.addsitedir(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__name__)), "deps")
  

• Import Numpy or Scipy from Maya’s script editor or another module with:

  import numpy, scipy