I've tried this your suggestion. I created a new PyCharm project and installed yt into a virtual environment there. I ran ds = yt.load("D:\ytini\IsolatedGalaxyTutorial\galaxy0030/galaxy0030") and got yt : [INFO ] 2019-12-09 11:13:46,984 Parameters: current_time = 0.00600002000283 yt : [INFO ] 2019-12-09 11:13:46,984 Parameters: domain_dimensions = [32 32 32] yt : [INFO ] 2019-12-09 11:13:46,986 Parameters: domain_left_edge = [0. 0. 0.] yt : [INFO ] 2019-12-09 11:13:46,986 Parameters: domain_right_edge = [1. 1. 1.] yt : [INFO ] 2019-12-09 11:13:46,986 Parameters: cosmological_simulation = 0.0 So, it looks like yt is OK when it's out by itself. However, when I make the Houdini pythonrc.py file point to that virtual environment, using: import sys sys.path.append('C:\Users\Owner\PycharmProjects\ytini\myYtini\Lib\site-packages') and then try to import yt in the Houdini python shell I get the same fnv_hash import error as before. I get the same result whether it's Houdini 16.0, 17.5 or 18.0.