Upgrading 3dsMax Python Version?

[joao_dgg3d]

Python 3.7 is nearing its End of Life this month, which means no further updates, bug fixes, and more importantly (to me) packages might stop supporting or releasing updates to that version.

That happens to be the Python version used by 3dsMax 2022 and 2021, which are technically still supported by Autodesk, for now anyways.

Is there any way to upgrade/update the Python installation we have bundled with 3dsMax to make sure I have the security fixes and package support until the end of these 3dsMax versions support?

[MartinBeh]

Hi,

I might be wrong but I don't think Autodesk supports newer versions of Python on older versions of 3ds Max. Doing this yourself might be possible, but also a bit complicated.

Is there a specific source of Python you were thinking of using instead? Who would compile it for Windows?

A potential problem you might encounter with this is the fact that Autodesk might use different versions of Visual C++ for different versions of 3ds Max, and unfortunately C++ DLLs (or rather their ABI) created with one version are not necessarily compatible with another one. Similar story is true for Python on Windows: https://wiki.python.org/moin/WindowsCompilers

Looking into this more closely, I notice for Python on Windows: "All supported versions of Python can be built using Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 or later".  And the 3ds Max SDK docs say that 3ds Max 2020-2022 use Microsoft Visual Studio 2017. So that would match!

You might be able to replace parts of C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2022\Python with a newer version, but that will certainly require some tinkering...  for example, C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2022\Python\Lib\site-packages contains packages that were compiled (and possibly customized) by Autodesk ...

I'd be interested to hear what your findings eventually are...