Develop Reference

Not able to import Tkinter in Maya 2014

I am using windows 7 and Autodesk Maya 2014.When i am trying to import Tkinter i am getting error.please tell me how to solve error given below ?
How to install any python package in Auto desk Maya 2014 ?
import Tkinter
Error
Error: line 1: ImportError: file C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2014\Python\lib\lib-tk\FixTk.py line 65: DLL load failed: %1 is not a valid Win32 application

I added a few Python modules to Maya with the "addsitedir-trick" explained at the end but not every python module will be playing nicely with Maya.
Python on Windows is built with Visual Studio 2008 Professional. Maya uses it's own Python interpreter but Autodesk builts Maya with another Visual Studio version. This can lead to problems if you insall python modules and try to use them with Maya. Beatuifully explained here (together with a the hard solution of compiling the wanted modules yourself):
http://p-nand-q.com/python/building-python-27-with-vs2010.html
What you can try: Install Python 2.7 on your Windows-box, install the module you want to access in Maya (eg with pip). Now in Maya add your system SitePackages (where you just installed the module to) to your Maya-Python-Interpreter SitePackages like so:
import site
site.addsitedir("/path/to/your/python27/Lib/site-packages")
Even cleaner solution would be to use a virtualenv instead of the global site-packages folder! (That's at least what i have done to get psycopg2 and requests play with Maya)
But as mentioned in the beginning of this answer there is a possibility that this may fail (with strange errors).
By the way: I highly recommend to use pyside instead of Tkinter if you want to do GUI stuff in Maya. Or the Maya-Wrappers preferably via pymel. (http://help.autodesk.com/cloudhelp/2017/ENU/Maya-Tech-Docs/PyMel/ui.html)

Python - How do you import downloaded directories/modules?

This is the first time I have attempted to use anything other than what's provided by python.
I have recently gotten into pythons provided Tkinter, though due to some issues I decided to use another GUI, and heard that PyQt was highly recommended, so I downloaded that and looked into various tutorials. In these tutorials, I cannot seem to execute any of the import statements in said tutorials that relate to PyQt, primarily PyQt5 (I have checked I have the correct version number by the way).
So for instance:
import PyQt5
raises the error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/Users/MEBO/PycharmProjects/Music/testing.py", line 1, in <module>
import Qt
ImportError: No module named 'Qt'
[Finished in 0.1s with exit code 1]
I have a lot of research into this. I've heard people talk of using pip to install modules, and I have done this be safe (as well as downloading it from the internet), I've tried changing the project interpreter to versions Python3/ 2.7/ 2.6, appending the path name to the sys.path directory, (which I really know nothing about to be honest, I was hoping I'd get lucky), though nothing seems to work.
Are you supposed to be able to just import a module off the bat, or do you have to set some things up first?

For windows download the package and extract it to (path where python installed)\Python27\Lib and then try to import.

Specific to PyQt
This package cannot just be downloaded and imported, it must be built because it is not pure python, it uses Qt (C++) and requires dependancies. Read this tutorial on installation.
There is also a very complete python package distribution, Anaconda, that includes pyqt and much more. Almost all the packages I ever looked at are in there.
In general to pure python code
In other cases, if you place modules/code that has been download into the directory that your python script is run from, you can import off the bat, or you can append/insert any folder to the sys.path.
# importer will search here last
sys.path.append('/path/to/code/')
# importer will search here second, right after script's directory
# this can be useful to override a module temporarily...
sys.path.insert(1,'/path/to/code/')

Python & Tide SDK - import external module?

Since python is bundled with the Tide SDK, I can't figure out how to use access external modules. I've tried copying the module folder "Lib/site-packages/YourModuleHere" to the tide SDK directory, and this suggestion here: TIdeSDK Python module import but with no success. The module I'm trying to use is https://github.com/burnash/gspread
Any ideas?
Thanks...

You may try http://www.py2exe.org/index.cgi/Tutorial
to convert your python code to exe with all needed modules then use Ti.Process.createProcess() to call your exe

In current version of TideSDK, loading custom python modules is not supported.It loads default set of Python modules compiled within the SDK.

I've had some luck installing a view external modules by running setup.py install from TideSDK's python.exe
This post helped:
Installing python modules in TideSDK
For Windows 7:
launch powershell
cd into the module folder
run:
C:\ProgramData\TideSDK\Modules\python\1.3.1-beta\python.exe setup.py install
It installs the module in \Lib\site-packages, as it should, and I'm able to use the import function in the python code.
This has worked for PIL and I'm trying to get it to function with pywin32. I'd love to hear if it works for other modules

Using Pygame without installing

I'm making a real simple RPG game at college and I would like to use pygame. However, my college has a group policy disabling any Windows executables from running so I can't install pygame. Is there any way I can just import pygame by just having it in the same folder?

One thing I do with external python libraries is to download the source, build it and copy the built library into ${PROJECT_HOME}/lib/${EXTERNAL_LIB_NAME}. This way, I can run my python scripts with just standard python installation on a machine. To be able to use the external lib, you'll have to include the lib directory to sys path like this:
import os
from sys import path as syspath
syspath.append(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'lib'))
P.S.: Since pygame has C/C++ files to be compiled, you'd have to use mingw instead. Refer to this answer for that: error: Unable to find vcvarsall.bat
EDIT: In case you're wondering how to build pygame from source, you'll need to run setup.py build. This will build the python library into 'build' folder of the package directory and there you'd see how it should be placed in Python's directory. You will face the compilation problem in Windows as I've mentioned before, but you can easily fix that.
EDIT 2: Download link to contents of 'lib' for PyGame:
Python 2.7: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/71422266/pygame27.7z
Python 3.2: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/71422266/pygame32.7z

If you're allowed to run stuff from a USB drive, one option would be to use Portable Python 2.7.3.2, which includes PyGame 1.9.1.

PyInstaller - ImportError: No module named win32api

I'm trying to compile a Python project (using Python 2.7 on Windows XP) into an EXE using PyInstaller with the default options. When I try to run the EXE, I get the message:
PyInstaller - ImportError: No module named win32api
I added the win32api path to the windows PATH environment variable (I do have Python Win32 Extensions installed) but it's not working. I'm pretty new to this and a little overwhelmed by all the options etc, and I really have no idea where to start (or what information would be useful to solving this problem.) I assume this is some little thing that I'm missing, but I haven't found anyone having precisely this problem online and any help would be greatly appreciated.

Ok, it looks like "import os" in one of my modules was causing this issue. I had no luck getting it to successfully use the win32api module, but since this was only being used to set the program name, I just commented this out and this particular issue is resolved. Thanks Luke for your help!