FRELLED Reloaded: Multiple techniques for astronomical data visualisation in Blender

TL;DR

FRELLED 5.0 is a comprehensive 3D visualization tool integrated with Blender, enabling real-time inspection of astronomical data sets with enhanced features, improved performance, and better usability for radio astronomy research.

Contribution

This paper introduces FRELLED 5.0, a significantly upgraded version with new visualization techniques, faster data loading, support for larger datasets, and compatibility with newer Blender versions and VR headsets.

Findings

FRELLED 5.0 offers faster FITS data loading and larger dataset support.

It introduces new visualization options like height maps and isosurfaces.

Enhanced modularity and compatibility facilitate future development.

Abstract

I present version 5.0 of FRELLED, the FITS Realtime Explorer of Low Latency in Every Dimension. This is a 3D data visualisation package for the popular Blender art software, designed to allow inspection of astronomical volumetric data sets (primarily, but not exclusively, radio wavelength data cubes) in real time using a variety of visualisation techniques. The suite of Python scripts that comprise FRELLED have been almost completely recoded and many new ones added, bringing FRELLED's operating environment from Blender version 2.49 to 2.79. Principle new features include: an enormously simplified installation procedure, a more modular graphical appearance that takes advantage of Blender 2.79's improved interface, much faster loading of FITS data, support for larger data sets, options to show the data as height maps in 2D mode or isosurfaces in 3D mode, utilisation of standard astropy and other Python modules to support a greater range of FITS files (with a particular emphasis on higher-frequency radio data such as from ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimetre Array), and the capability of exporting the data to Blender 2.9+ which supports stereoscopic 3D displays in virtual reality headsets. In addition, in-built help files are accessible from each menu panel, as well as direct links to a complete wiki and set of video tutorials. Finally, the code itself is much more modular, allowing easier maintainability and, over the longer term, a far easier prospect of migrating to more recent versions of Blender.