[Music] What is VS Code, and why would you want to use it to edit Blender Python scripts?

And add-ons? VS Code is similar to Blender's text editor, but has a lot more functionality. It's basically a text

editor on steroids. You'll write code faster with guidance; there's better code highlighting. You'll easily work on

projects that span multiple files.  VS Code can point out where you made mistakes. There are powerful editing features, like editing multiple lines at

once. There are hundreds of useful extensions that will allow you to be more productive when writing code. Even the developers behind Blender use VS

Code, and the best feature of all: it's free! So there is no reason for you not to leverage this tool to make your life

easier when it comes to writing Python scripts for Blender. I'm Victor Stavenov, and I'll be helping

you set up Visual Studio Code to edit Blender Python scripts. We'll go over five steps to make this happen. This

particular video is for Windows users. If you're not a Windows user, I have a video for Mac users and Linux users, so check

those out. And before we start, I actually didn't tell you about one more feature that, in my opinion, is a total game changer for

anyone who hasn't used a tool like VS Code before. So make sure to stick around until the end.

For the very first step, we'll need to install a standalone version of Python. Blender comes with its built-in version

of the Python interpreter, but Windows does not. This standalone version is what VS Code will be using and will fix this.

Now let's search for "Python download" and open the official python.org website. As of this recording, the latest Python

version is 3.11, but there are also other Python versions. Which one do we choose? We can probably use the latest version.

of Python, but let's see what Blender is using. Let's open the scripting workspace in Blender and then look into the

interactive Python console, and we can see that Blender is using 3.10. We can download any version that's

higher than that, and it will work for us. Let's do that. I'll select the 3.10.10 version and then

scroll all the way down to get all the files in the download. I'll select the recommended Windows installer 64-bit and

start downloading it. After the download's complete, I'm going to launch it and start the installation process. At the bottom of the window, I'll

make sure to check "Add Python executable to the PATH," and then start the installation. Look, the installation is done. I'll

open the command prompt by searching for CMD in the search menu, and then I'll type in "python" and hit Enter. This will

open a REPL similar to the interactive Python console you'll find in the Blender scripting workspace, but this is outside

of Blender. Let's import `random` and generate some random numbers. I'll generate a random number between 0 and

100 and then repeat this a couple of times to make sure that everything's working as expected. After I'm done validating, I'll hit Ctrl

Z and hit Enter to exit out of the REPL. Now it's time to download and install Visual Studio Code. Search for VS Code,

download, open that first link, and download the Windows installer. Once the download's finished, just install VS Code as any other software.

I would just highly recommend adding the context menu options for the file and the directory; they are really helpful.

Now that VS Code is installed, let's make sure that it can work with Python. Let's open the extensions panel on the left

and search for Python. Look for the Python extension that was created by Microsoft and hit "Install." This will start preparing VS Code to

Working with Python, the installation process might take some time. As soon as the installation is complete, let's open

a folder with VS Code. I have a "tutorials" folder in my C drive and I'll use that as the folder. You can use any empty

folder you like. Let's hit the "New File" button, and this will allow us to create a new file in

that folder. I'll create a file called "my_script_2.py". We can easily find files in our project in the sidebar on the

left, and we can switch between already open files using the tabs above, just like a web browser. Let's write a simple Python script that

generates random numbers. At the bottom right, you can see that VS Code has already figured out that we'll be

writing Python code and it has already found the Python interpreter we just installed. Okay, now let's execute our script. Let's

open the "Run and Debug" sidebar and then hit "Run and Debug." Select "Python File: Debug the current active Python

file." This will open a terminal below and start executing our script. Our script has finished executing, but nothing was printed out. This is because

we're not using any print statements. Let's fix that. I'll create a new variable and print that variable out. Now,

let's execute the script one more time, and let's run it again for good measure. You can see now it's printing out a

random number. Let's write another simple Python script that will use the web browser module to open Blender's website

in a browser. Let's execute this script, and Blender's website has opened in another window. At this point, you could easily start

animating anything you want outside of Blender. Now we need to teach VS Code what is in the `bpy` module so it can help us and

give us hints as we write our scripts. One way to do this is to install the fake-bpy module. I've opened the GitHub

repository for fake bpy, and I'll provide a link in the description to this webpage to install it. I'm going to use the pip

installation method that just requires us to run this command. I'll go back into VS Code and paste in

that command and run it. This will install the module, and after that's done, I want to restart VS Code.

Now let's create a simple Blender Python script that creates a cube and moves it about the z-axis.

Notice, as I type, VS Code is giving me suggestions of what to write next. I can hit tab on my keyboard to let it

finish typing for me. Notice that I'm not typing exactly the command; VS Code is able to figure out what I want based on

a number of letters from the command. Now it's time to connect VS Code and Blender. To do that, we'll need to install

one more extension. Let's open the extension sidebar and search for "Blender Python." Look for the Blender Development extension created by Jacques Luca

and hit the install button. After that's done installing, hit Ctrl+Shift+P to open VS Code's command palette,

type in "Blender," and these are all the commands that this extension installed. Select "Blender: Select Blender Executable." Select the Blender executable you wish to use.

I'll just get the location of the currently running Blender. I'll open properties and copy the location and open it.

You'll see Blender starting up, and there's a good chance that it will exit quickly. That's because the extension ran

into an error while trying to install some modules that it needs to actually connect to Blender. If you don't

see this error, you're good to go. But if you do, here's how to fix it: We'll need to give write permission to

the Python folder where we are installing some extra modules. Let's navigate to the Python folder in Blender's install directory.

Open the properties, open the security tab, select the user group, and hit "Edit". Click on the "Allow write" checkbox.

Hit "Apply" and try to run Blender from VS Code again.  The renderer should successfully start, and in VS Code, you should see "Debug client attached."

Let's delete everything from the scene. Go back into VS Code, hit Ctrl+Shift+P, and select "Run script."

Go back into Blender, and you should see that our script successfully executed. Now it's time to talk about the game-changing feature I mentioned at the start of the video.  The feature is called debugging.

The basic idea is that it allows you to pause the execution of your script and inspect the variables, properties, and see how your script executes step-by-step. Let's add some code to illustrate this feature.

Let me create a new variable for the location of the cube and update the location of the X, Y, and Z. Let's place a breakpoint in the middle of our script and let's execute this script one more time.

You should see how the script has stopped, and on the sidebar, you can see that we have variables available for us to inspect. Now we can step through each line of our script and see how the variables and data changes.

It's like running a script in slow motion. Make sure to hit the play button when you're done to continue the script execution.

Now, when we go into Blender, you can see that our script has finished executing and placed the cube into a new position.

But that's not all! Let's create an add-on so we can debug it. I'm going to create a new folder and open that in VS Code. I'll create a new `__init__.py` file and paste in the code from one of my tutorials where I explain how to create a custom panel.

Let's start Blender. You can see that this custom panel is...

part of Blender already and it's functioning. [Music] Now let's put a breakpoint in our

custom operator, and as soon as I press the button of our custom operator, I'll go back into VS Code and see that

the breakpoint was hit. I can investigate the variables and parameters here and see what the add-on will do next.

Okay, now that you have VS Code set up, make sure to check out this tutorial next so you can start using it right

away. Thanks for watching! Thank you. [Music]

5 Steps to setup VSCode for Blender Python (on Windows)

Scripts