Importing other modules in blenderproc

[SS-Robotics]

Hi,

I am kind of new to blender and blenderproc. I was wondering how I can add and install other modules in blenderproc. For example, I need to import and use PyKDL in my code. However, when I try to install the module with blenderproc I get an error. Any suggestion for this would be helpful.

Thanks,
Sam

[cornerfarmer]

Hi Sam,

could you please post the command you used and the error you got?

[SS-Robotics]

Hi,

First of all, I try to do "blenderproc pip install PyKDL". This would give me just a message:
"Using blender in /home/sam/blender/blender-3.1.0-linux-x64"
And then when I try to import the PyKDL module in my code with "import PyKDL". Then if I run my code with "blenderproc run test.py", I get an error : "ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'PyKDL' ".

Thanks.

[cornerfarmer]

Hey @SS-Robotics,

the command you are using is correct, however the reason you don't see any output is because blenderproc thinks the package was already installed, although it is not due to an installation error.
To clear the installed-package-cache, simply call blenderproc pip uninstall PyKDL first.
When now calling blenderproc pip install PyKDL again, you should see the following error message:

Collecting PyKDL
  Using cached PyKDL-1.4.0.tar.gz (1.5 kB)
  Preparing metadata (setup.py) ... error
  error: subprocess-exited-with-error
  
  × python setup.py egg_info did not run successfully.
  │ exit code: 1
  ╰─> [7 lines of output]
      running egg_info
      creating /tmp/pip-pip-egg-info-_0rb5ud_/PyKDL.egg-info
      writing /tmp/pip-pip-egg-info-_0rb5ud_/PyKDL.egg-info/PKG-INFO
      writing dependency_links to /tmp/pip-pip-egg-info-_0rb5ud_/PyKDL.egg-info/dependency_links.txt
      writing top-level names to /tmp/pip-pip-egg-info-_0rb5ud_/PyKDL.egg-info/top_level.txt
      writing manifest file '/tmp/pip-pip-egg-info-_0rb5ud_/PyKDL.egg-info/SOURCES.txt'
      error: package directory 'PyKDL' does not exist
      [end of output]
  
  note: This error originates from a subprocess, and is likely not a problem with pip.
error: metadata-generation-failed

It seems the PyKDL package only works with Python 3.6, however blender is using Python 3.10. I also tried to install the package on another Python 3.8 instance and I got the same error message there.

[SS-Robotics]

Hey,

Thank you so much for the info. So if I understand correctly, I cannot use this package by blender. I wonder if I will face another issue if I use blender with previous python versions like python 3.6.

[cornerfarmer]

Yes, unfortunately, blenders python version is fixed. So either you find a way to install the package in python 3.10 or you find another package.
Usually the python version is not that big of a problem. All pip packages that we use can be installed easily in blenders python environment.