Guild of Writers

Revision as of 17:31, 9 April 2011

Video Tutorial

bnewton81 made a video tutorial for the installation procedure at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiFet-3BYAs

Required Software

Note: Blender 2.49b must be used because it is the only version of Blender than supports Python 2.6, which is required by all of the other required software.

Windows

• Blender 2.49b
• Python 2.6.6
• Python Imaging Library 1.1.6
• PyYAML 3.09

Mac/Linux

• Blender 2.49b
• Python 2.6.6
• Python Imaging Library
• PyYAML 3.09

Finding your Blender Scripts Folder

Before we get PyPRP and install it, you will need to locate your Blender scripts folder, which is where PyPRP needs to be placed.

All Platforms (Advanced)

Note: This method is for users who are already comfortable with using Blender

Click on the Help > System > System Information. This will create a text file called system-info.txt inside Blender. Open this text file and look for a line that says Default dir for scripts. Your scripts folder is written out in the line below.

Windows

Blender allows you to choose where your scripts folder is installed. By default, Blender obscures the script folder in your Application Data folder, which makes finding it somewhat troublesome. Unfortunately, the Application Data folder is in different places depending on which version of Windows you are using. Please refer to the following sample locations to see if your scripts folder is in the Application Data folder.

• Windows 2000/XP: C:\Documents and Settings\<Your User Name>\Application Data\Blender Foundation
• Windows Vista/7: C:\Users\<Your User Name>\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation

If the Blender Foundation folder is present, then your scripts folder can be found by going to the Blender > .blender > scripts folder. Otherwise, the scripts folder can be found within your Blender installation itself. This is usually C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\.blender\scripts. If you are running a 64-bit operating system, substitute Program Files for Program Files (x86).

Mac OS X

You have two options: Either use the built-in scripts folder of the Blender application. This is simple and makes PyPRP available to all users of the computer, but you will have to move over PyPRP if you install a newer version of Blender. Or make your personal scripts folder to keep PyPRP and other third-party scripts neatly separated from Blender's built-in scripts.

To use the built-in scripts folder: Right-click or ctrl-click on the blender application and choose Show Package Contents. Go to Contents/MacOS. The .blender folder is in there, but it is invisible because its name starts with a period. To open it, press cmd-shift-G (or choose Go to Folder… from the Go menu) and enter .blender into the box. The scripts folder is in the .blender folder and already contains a number of scripts.

To make your own scripts folder: Open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal, enter

mkdir -p ~/.blender/scripts

and press return. You can quit Terminal after that. (You can't make the .blender folder in the Finder because it doesn't allow you to rename it to a name starting with a period.) Now open your home folder (/Users/<your user name>) and press cmd-shift-G (or choose Go to Folder… from the Go menu). Enter .blender into the box to open the invisible folder you just created and find the scripts folder in there.

At this stage, Blender will exclusively use the newly created scripts folder and thus lose its built-in scripts. To bring them back: Open Blender and drag the menu bar down to reveal the Preferences window. Select File Paths in the bottom button row. Click the folder button in the Python Scripts box, navigate to where you installed the Blender application (blender.app) in the file dialog, drill down to blender.app/Contents/MacOS/.blender/scripts, and click SELECT SCRIPT PATH. After closing the Preferences window again, choose File > Save Default Settings to make the new setting permanent.

Linux

/home/<Your User Name>/.blender/scripts

Getting PyPRP

PyPRP 1.6 (latest stable version)

Once you have the required software installed and have located your Blender scripts folder, download PyPRP 1.6.0. If you have a previous version of PyPRP installed you will need to uninstall it by removing all files starting with prp_, alc, and uruprp_ from your Blender scripts folder because the files from older versions of PyPRP will conflict with PyPRP 1.6 and cause it to crash. Unzip the file and move the PyPRP folder (the whole folder, not just the files in it – this has changed from previous versions) into the Blender scripts folder.

Nightly Build and Older Releases

Alternatively, if you are interested in getting the very latest development version with the newest features, you should grab the bleeding edge nightly build of PyPRP. This file is updated every midnight UTC -5 and represents the latest bleeding edge of PyPRP.

Advanced users can select any older versions of PyPRP they would like to download.

Congrats

Congratulations! You should now have PyPRP installed and are ready to get started building Ages. If you'd like to test that PyPRP is installed and working properly you can try to get started on your own.