Installation

To install and use the ML-Agents Toolkit, follow the steps below. Detailed instructions for each step are provided later on this page.

  1. Install Unity (6000.0 or later)
  2. Install Python (>= 3.10.1, <=3.10.12) - we recommend using 3.10.12
  3. Install the com.unity.ml-agents Unity package; or clone this repository and install locally (recommended for the latest version and bug fixes)
  4. Install mlagents-envs
  5. Install mlagents

Install Unity 6000.0 or Later

Download and install Unity. We strongly recommend that you install Unity through the Unity Hub as it will enable you to manage multiple Unity versions.

Install Python 3.10.12

We recommend installing Python 3.10.12. If you are using Windows, please install the x86-64 version and not x86. If your Python environment doesn't include pip3, see these instructions on installing it. We also recommend using conda or mamba to manage your python virtual environments.

Conda python setup

Once conda has been installed in your system, open a terminal and execute the following commands to setup a python 3.10.12 virtual environment and activate it.

conda create -n mlagents python=3.10.12 && conda activate mlagents

Install the com.unity.ml-agents Unity package

The Unity ML-Agents C# SDK is a Unity Package. You can install the com.unity.ml-agents package directly from the Package Manager registry. Please make sure you enable 'Preview Packages' in the 'Advanced' dropdown in order to find the latest Preview release of the package.

NOTE: If you do not see the ML-Agents package listed in the Package Manager please follow the advanced installation instructions below.

Advanced: Local Installation for Development

You will need to clone the repository if you plan to modify or extend the ML-Agents Toolkit for your purposes, or if you'd like to download our example environments. Some of our tutorials / guides assume you have access to our example environments.

Use the command below to clone the repository

git clone --branch release_23 https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/ml-agents.git

The --branch release_23 option will switch to the tag of the latest stable release. Omitting that will get the develop branch which is potentially unstable. However, if you find that a release branch does not work, the recommendation is to use the develop branch as it may have potential fixes for bugs and dependency issues.

(Optional to get bleeding edge)

git clone https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/ml-agents.git

If you plan to contribute those changes back, make sure to clone the develop branch (by omitting --branch release_23 from the command above). See our Contributions Guidelines for more information on contributing to the ML-Agents Toolkit.

You can add the local com.unity.ml-agents package (from the repository that you just cloned) to your project by:

  1. navigating to the menu Window -> Package Manager.
  2. In the package manager window click on the + button on the top left of the packages list).
  3. Select Add package from disk...
  4. Navigate into the com.unity.ml-agents folder.
  5. Select the package.json file.

Unity Package Manager Window package.json

If you are going to follow the examples from our documentation, you can open the Project folder in Unity and start tinkering immediately.

Install Python package

Installing the mlagents Python package involves installing other Python packages that mlagents depends on. So you may run into installation issues if your machine has older versions of any of those dependencies already installed. Consequently, our supported path for installing mlagents is to leverage Python Virtual Environments. Virtual Environments provide a mechanism for isolating the dependencies for each project and are supported on Mac / Windows / Linux. We offer a dedicated guide on Virtual Environments.

Installing mlagents from PyPi

You can install the ML-Agents Python package directly from PyPi. This is the recommended approach if you installed the C# package via the Package Manager registry.

Important: Ensure you install a Python package version that matches your Unity package version. Check the release history to find compatible versions.

To install, activate your virtual environment and run the following command:

python -m pip install mlagents==1.1.0

which will install the latest version of ML-Agents Python packages and associated dependencies available on PyPi. If building the wheel for grpcio fails, run the following command before installing mlagents with pip:

conda install "grpcio=1.48.2" -c conda-forge

When you install the Python package, the dependencies listed in the setup.py file are also installed. These include PyTorch.

Advanced: Local Installation for Development

(Windows) Installing PyTorch

On Windows, you'll have to install the PyTorch package separately prior to installing ML-Agents in order to make sure the cuda-enabled version is used, rather than the CPU-only version. Activate your virtual environment and run from the command line:

pip3 install torch~=2.2.1 --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu121

Note that on Windows, you may also need Microsoft's Visual C++ Redistributable if you don't have it already. See the PyTorch installation guide for more installation options and versions.

All Platforms

To install the mlagents Python package, activate your virtual environment and run from the command line:

cd /path/to/ml-agents
python -m pip install ./ml-agents-envs
python -m pip install ./ml-agents

Note that this will install mlagents from the cloned repository, not from the PyPi repository. If you installed this correctly, you should be able to run mlagents-learn --help, after which you will see the command line parameters you can use with mlagents-learn.

If you intend to make modifications to mlagents or mlagents_envs, from the repository's root directory, run:

pip3 install torch -f https://download.pytorch.org/whl/torch_stable.html
pip3 install -e ./ml-agents-envs
pip3 install -e ./ml-agents

Running pip with the -e flag will let you make changes to the Python files directly and have those reflected when you run mlagents-learn. It is important to install these packages in this order as the mlagents package depends on mlagents_envs, and installing it in the other order will download mlagents_envs from PyPi.