Why Spaces Are Bad, Part Two: Why Spaces Are Bad In LightWave

In the first article I told you Why Spaces Are Bad, but spaces can also cause unneccessary complications in LightWave.

If LightWave is installed in C:\Program Files, it's necessary to wrap LightWave's path in quotes. By default, LightWave's configs files are stored in C:\Documents and Settings, again requiring quotes. These are minor inconveniences, but things can get very much worse...

I'm always reading how people HATE ScreamerNet, how NewTek should write a better solution, and so on. Then there are the people who say Amleto/Butterfly/Mule/Spider/TequilaScream are better. They're just interface enhancements - underneath the hood what's running is lwsn.exe.

I have to tell you - I LOVE ScreamerNet. It's simple, elegant, and IT WORKS! You just have to get organised. Once you have it up and running, by all means use one of the third-party controllers, but it's essential you get the basics right.

Anyway, I digress. Let's get back to how those spaces can bugger things up...

Suppose you're doing some cool particle effects for an ad. You create content folders, e.g., N:\Scenes\TV Ad. Then you create a bunch of stuff, do some test renders, fix a couple of things you don't like and you hit F10 to render the scene before heading off to bed. Unfortunately, during the night, the power goes out and the last thirty frames don't render. Undaunted, you reload the scene, change it to render the missing frames and hit F10 again.

The problem is there's a glitch in the animation: the particles have been randomised and the two renders don't join up correctly. So, you decide to save a .pfx file to the Scene folder. However, inside the scene file you have something like:

The space between TV and Ad can cause problems. Note that the path is NOT in quotes.

Even if your paths don't contain spaces, it's easy to get tripped up. If you add two particle emitters without renaming either, they will appear as emitter (1) and emitter (2). Of course, if you write out their PFX files, by default they'll be saved as emitter (1).pfx and emitter (2).pfx - note there are spaces between the name emitter and the opening parenthesis in each name.

Similar problems can occur with .mdd files, and probably other plugins I haven't even thought of. Of course, you can edit the scene files to insert quotes, but a little planning ahead can save you a lot of trouble.