VTK not found in python after conda install

[sandwich]

I am attempting to install and run mayavi through python using conda on windows 10. I have run:

conda create -n ssms_gias python=3.7
conda install -n ssms_gias pyqt=5
conda install -n ssms_gias -c menpo mayavi

According to conda, I have vtk 8.2.0 installed after running these commands.

However, after attempting to start mayavi by running mayavi2, I get the following error:

ImportError: No module named ‘vtkCommonCorePython’

Searching through other forum topics, I have added a PYTHONPATH environment variable to the directory containing vtkCommonCorePython.pyd:

PYTHONPATH=C:\ProgramData\Miniconda3\envs\ssms_gias\Lib\site-packages\vtkmodules

Now, when attempting to import vtk in python I get the following:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File “C:\ProgramData\Miniconda3\envs\ssms_gias\lib\site-packages\vtkmodules\vtkCommonCore.py”, line 5, in
from .vtkCommonCorePython import *
ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found.

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File “”, line 1, in
File “C:\ProgramData\Miniconda3\envs\ssms_gias\lib\site-packages\vtk.py”, line 32, in
all_spec.loader.exec_module(all_m)
File “C:\ProgramData\Miniconda3\envs\ssms_gias\lib\site-packages\vtkmodules\all.py”, line 7, in
from .vtkCommonCore import *
File “C:\ProgramData\Miniconda3\envs\ssms_gias\lib\site-packages\vtkmodules\vtkCommonCore.py”, line 9, in
from vtkCommonCorePython import *
ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found.

Configuration Info:
Windows 10 Version 20H2 OS Build 19042.1110
conda version : 4.10.3
python version : 3.7.3.final.0
pyqt version: 5.9.2
vtk version: 8.2.0

[ben.boeckel (Ben Boeckel (Kitware))]

On Windows, you probably need to manually add PATH entries to the main bin paths where the main DLLs live. This was fixed in VTK 9.0 with Python 3.9+ (through APIs that are not available before then, namely os.add_dll_directory).

[sandwich]

Thanks for the quick response! regrettably it looks like Mayavi requires python 3.7, so I am stuck with VTK 8.2. I have added a PATH entry and a PYTHONPATH entry to that directory (C:\ProgramData\Miniconda3\envs\ssms_gias\Library\bin), and the error still persists.

Is there another environment variable that I should be using?

latest stack trace:

$ python -c “import vtk”
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “C:\ProgramData\Miniconda3\envs\ssms_gias\lib\site-packages\vtkmodules\vtkCommonCore.py”, line 5, in
from .vtkCommonCorePython import *
ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found.

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File “”, line 1, in
File “C:\ProgramData\Miniconda3\envs\ssms_gias\lib\site-packages\vtk.py”, line 32, in
all_spec.loader.exec_module(all_m)
File “C:\ProgramData\Miniconda3\envs\ssms_gias\lib\site-packages\vtkmodules\all.py”, line 7, in
from .vtkCommonCore import *
File “C:\ProgramData\Miniconda3\envs\ssms_gias\lib\site-packages\vtkmodules\vtkCommonCore.py”, line 9, in
from vtkCommonCorePython import *
ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found.

Entries in PATH:

C:\ProgramData\Miniconda3\envs\ssms_gias
C:\ProgramData\Miniconda3\envs\ssms_gias\Library\mingw-w64\bin
C:\ProgramData\Miniconda3\envs\ssms_gias\Library\usr\bin
C:\ProgramData\Miniconda3\envs\ssms_gias\Library\bin
C:\ProgramData\Miniconda3\envs\ssms_gias\Scripts
C:\ProgramData\Miniconda3\envs\ssms_gias\bin
C:\ProgramData\Miniconda3
C:\ProgramData\Miniconda3\Library\mingw-w64\bin
C:\ProgramData\Miniconda3\Library\usr\bin
C:\ProgramData\Miniconda3\Library\bin
C:\ProgramData\Miniconda3\Scripts
C:\ProgramData\Miniconda3\bin
C:\ProgramData\Miniconda3\condabin
C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation\PhysX\Common
C:\WINDOWS\system32
C:\WINDOWS
C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem
C:\WINDOWS\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0
C:\WINDOWS\System32\OpenSSH
C:\Program Files\Docker\Docker\resources\bin
C:\ProgramData\DockerDesktop\version-bin
C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Shell 8.0\bin
C:\ProgramData\Miniconda3\envs\ssms_gias\Library\bin

PythonPath:
PYTHONPATH=C:\ProgramData\Miniconda3\envs\ssms_gias\Lib\site-packages\vtkmodules;C:\ProgramData\Miniconda3\envs\ssms_gias\Library\bin

[ben.boeckel (Ben Boeckel (Kitware))]

Python 3.9 has more useful info there (like…the name of that not-found library), but you can use ProcessMonitor to figure out which library is actually not being found.

[sandwich]

Thanks for the tip.

The dll that seems to not be found is tbb.dll, which as far as I can tell is Intel’s thread builder and should be non essential. All of the following were successfully checked at a file level (they went through the operations of CreateFile, QueryBasicInformationFile, CloseFile, CreateFileMapping, and Load Image successfully.

vtkCommonCorePython37D-8.2.dll
VCRUNTIME140_1.dll
vtkWrappingPython37Core-8.2.dll
vtkCommonCore-8.2.dll
vtksys-8.2.dll

I have attached events that python.exe reported, if you are willing to take a closer look, although, it appeared that most of it was successful.

There were some calls to files that were never found, in particular:

init.cp37-win_amd64.pyd
init.pyd
python37._pth
python._pth
python37.zip
pyvenv.cfg
tbb.dll

python_attempt.CSV (631.4 KB)
python_attemptPML.PML (3.4 MB)

[ben.boeckel (Ben Boeckel (Kitware))]

@sandwich

The dll that seems to not be found is tbb.dll, which as far as I can tell is Intel’s thread builder and should be non essential.

It’s essential if the SMP backend is TBB.

@sandwich

There were some calls to files that were never found

This is fine. Python tries extensions in order, so __init__.py is going to be attempted after those two .pyd extension filenames.

[sandwich]

Hi Ben, thanks for your replies so far. I have tbb.dll from other applications, and have copied it into a source where it was found by the project. I am now able to get further, but now when importing vtkIOParallelPython I get the following error:

ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified procedure could not be found.

ProcMon shows no unresolved dependencies found, so I speculate that I have a wrong copy of tbb.dll. Would there be any place I can search to find the right version? Alternately, do you have any other thoughts?

[ben.boeckel (Ben Boeckel (Kitware))]

The right tbb.dll is the one corresponding to the one VTK built against. You’ll have to interrogate Anaconda as to how it got TBB into the VTK build.