Houdini for Astrophysical Visualization

Abstract: The rapid growth in scale and complexity of both computational and observational astrophysics over the past decade necessitates efficient and intuitive methods for examining and visualizing large datasets. Here we discuss some newly developed tools to import and manipulate astrophysical data into the three dimensional visual effects software, {\it Houdini}. This software is widely used by visual effects artists, but a recently implemented Python API now allows astronomers to more easily use Houdini as a visualization tool. This paper includes a description of features, work flow, and various example visualizations. The project website, www.ytini.com, contains Houdini tutorials and links to the Python script Bitbucket repository aimed at a scientific audience to simplify the process of importing and rendering astrophysical data.