This is a tutorial for common folk who just want to use Python and aren't sure about importing their own code

or other people's code. It can get confusing. The first scenario is you've written some Python code; you have a very

special module, and you have some other script that you want to transfer that information to. We'll call one file 'file one',

we'll call the other 'file two'. Let's assume that in 'file one', we've written something super important, a definition called 'my

function'. What my function does is arbitrary. It's so arbitrary!

Importing 'file one' and running that doesn't know what 'file one' is. Okay, maybe it's a relative import: `from relative import this`. No.

The issue is that Blender's file structure is different from a normal directory because, in fact, we have two text files that live inside the blend file,

as you can see. So what you do is you right-click, copy the full data path. I'm going to make a module name, so I'm going

to say `file_one = this_text_file`. We don't actually need the name, and then you write `import file_one`. You wouldn't

believe how many workarounds people have on the internet for this instead of using this basic line. The only other

thing you need is to import Blender's Python. I run this, and now it runs fine. In fact, I could write `file_one.my_function()`.

I will run it. We can go to the system console; it says 'so arbitrary'. Now, the second scenario is you want to import

somebody else's code. What you might be tempted to do is... Blender has its own Python interpreter, so what I've seen

people do is they navigate over to Blender 4.2, 4.2 Python, and say, 'Okay,

Python, install some things.' It ends up going to this... this is just useless information, but it goes to the site...

Packages like this aren't very reliable because they require admin permissions, and if you make an add-on, you don't know if

it'll work on somebody else's computer. So the best course of action is to just do this manually.

I'm going to make a custom folder; I can literally just call it 'custom'. In fact, just copy this address. What do I

want you to do? I want you to `pip install` something like Pillow (that's the name of a package), and the key is you

want this `--target` flag, set equal to this path. So what this statement says is,

okay, we're going to import blah blah blah, but put it inside of this folder; target it to this folder. So if we were

trying to import Pillow (which goes by `PIL` if you're trying to import it)... there's no such thing. But now, when we install

this... no such file or directory. Okay, this is important: if it doesn't work for you, do this with `-m`, and now you're going to see

it's going to start installing, and it's in this folder. We're going to have Blender reference this directory. So

again, we installed into a folder, but then we say, 'Blender, you're allowed to look inside of this.' What I need to do is I

need to import `sys`. This means `sys.path.append`. I believe you have to do something like this, where you uh

do a string literal, put an `r` before it, and put your path inside of these quotation marks. So I run this; uh, you can

see it worked fine. But now the difference is, if I were to import `PIL`, let's try this again; now it can do it. So let's try

something that isn't there yet, so `cv2` for OpenCV... no such thing. And now I will install it, making sure to use this

target flag—very important—and now it's going to install OpenCV. And now, because this is already in the

System path. I run it, and it can actually execute that. Not only can we import our own things with the `as` module command,

but we can import other people's things by using a tertiary, uh, folder that you could even pack inside of an add-on.

You have a script where it then adds the relevant folder to their system path, which turns out to be pretty easy to do.

Importing Python Modules and Packages // Blender (no module named...)

Importing Python Modules and Packages // Blender (no module named...)