FYI - Ultimate Natural Bend Morphs for V7 - HALF of features not working

First -

I have already opened a helpdesk support ticket on this. I am posting in the forum as an FYI to people who have bought this product that there are problems with it and they should expect DAZ to address them; and to people who are thiking about buying it that they may want to wait for DAZ to fix things.

Second -

I know I already started a thread on the initial problem I found, but I have a good (to me, anyway) reason for starting this separate thread (see Note 1 below).

Third -

I am referring to the product as downloaded with DIM. I do not know if the same applies to it supplied by Connect. Someone who has bought it and used Connect to obtain and install it should check. All the detail needed to check is below.

To business:

There is a considerable problem with this product not working as advertised, at least as supplied by DIM. Only around half of what is listed on the store page actually works. The problem with this product is so much more extensive than I realised when originally posting about it. It's not just the elbows.

On the store product page, it lists the product as supplying morphs that improve the following joint rotations (copied and pasted from the product page):

 Ultimate Collar Bend L
 Ultimate Collar Bend R
 Ultimate Collar Front Back L
 Ultimate Collar Front Back R
 Ultimate Collar Twist L
 Ultimate Collar Twist R
 Ultimate Elbow Bend L
 Ultimate Elbow Bend R
 Ultimate Forearm Twist L
 Ultimate Forearm Twist R
 Ultimate Neck Head Bend
 Ultimate Neck Head Side Side
 Ultimate Neck Head Twist
 Ultimate Shin L
 Ultimate Shin R
 Ultimate Shoulder Twist L
 Ultimate Shoulder Twist R
 Ultimate Thigh Bend L
 Ultimate Thigh Bend R
 Ultimate Thigh Side Side L
 Ultimate Thigh Side Side R
 Ultimate Thigh Twist L
 Ultimate Thigh Twist R
 
Each of those is actually the label of one of the control dials visible to the user, and each then controls a number of actual morphs (dials visible in /Hidden/People/Victoria 7/ if setting Show Hidden), from 1 to 5 per joint rotation, with most controlling two morphs, one for positive and one for negative rotation.
 
(The entries I've removed from the list copied from the store product page - Ultimate Natural Bend Morphs for Victoria 7, Ultimate Leg Out L, Ultimate Leg Out R, Ultimate Thigh L, Ultimate Thigh R - are master controllers that control all or subsets of the others.)

Of those 23 joint rotations listed above the morphs for the following DO NOT WORK. AT ALL. They don't just do the wrong thing; they do NOTHING.

 Ultimate Collar Twist L (2 morphs: 1 pos 1 neg)
 Ultimate Collar Twist R (2 morphs: 1 pos 1 neg)
 Ultimate Elbow Bend L (1 morph)
 Ultimate Elbow Bend R (1 morph)
 Ultimate Forearm Twist L (2 morphs: 1 pos 1 neg)
 Ultimate Forearm Twist R (2 morphs: 1 pos 1 neg)
 Ultimate Shoulder Twist L (2 morphs: 1 pos 1 neg)
 Ultimate Shoulder Twist R (2 morphs: 1 pos 1 neg)
 Ultimate Thigh Twist L (2 morphs: 1 pos 1 neg)
 Ultimate Thigh Twist R (2 morphs: 1 pos 1 neg)
 
 That is TEN of the 23 advertised improved joint rotations for which the product actually does nothing - NOTHING - at all. And to cap that, two of the other remaining 13 only HALF work.
 
 Ultimate Thigh Bend L (2 morphs: 1 Forward 1 Back)
 Ultimate Thigh Bend R (2 morphs: 1 Forward 1 Back)
 
 For these two, the morphs to improve forward bends of the thighs work; the morphs for bends backwards do NOT.
 
 For those with a techie mind - or who want to develop one - I will explain the reason. In each of the 10 cases that do nothing, and for the missing correction for the thigh bend back, the situation and fault is exactly the same. In data\DAZ 3D\Genesis 3\Female\Morphs\K.H. Image Studio\Ultimate Natural Bend Morphs for Victoria 7\ all of the .dsf files that should be there are there. The ones for the visible-to-the-user control channels are all correct and can be dialled on a loaded G3F. The ones for all of the actual morphs do contain all the information to create the 'hidden' morph channels, and also contain the ERC formulae to link them to the control channels and the appropriate joint rotation channels, so on posing the figure one can see the actual morph channels dialling appropriately if you have Show Hidden set in the parameter pane. But for the collar twists, elbow bends, Forearm twists, shoulder twists and Thigh twists, and for thigh bend backs, the spinnning morph dials have NO EFFECT. NONE. And that is because all of those morph data .dsf files for those bends, all TWENTY of those morph data 'dsf files, contain:
 
             "morph" : {
                 "vertex_count" : 17418,
                 "deltas" : {
                     "count" : 0,
                     "values" : [
                     ]
                 }
             }

ABSOLUTELY NO MORPH DELTAS.

For those who don't but would like to understand - the number after 'count' is the number of G3F vertices affected by the morph; between the open and close square brackets after 'values' should be lines of numbers, one line per G3F vertex affectd by the morph, first number in the line the identifying number of an affected vertex, followed by three numbers that are the x, y and z 'deltas' ... the distances that vertex should be moved by to change the shape when the morph is applied at 1. That is what a morph is as supplied: a .dsf DSON file for the morph that includes a section as above, but with a 'count' showing the number of G3F vertices affected by the morph, and a list of the x, y and z amounts each affected vertex is moved by when the morph is dialled to 1.

But all the morphs to reshape and improve the joints when those 10 joint rotations listed on the product page - plus the 'back' rotation of the thigh - are used contain that same snippet.

"count" : 0,

so the morphs affect NO vertices. And no "values", no deltas to say how much any vertices should be moved on morphing.

So those 'morphs' do NOTHING.

The product page (and some of it is specifically in the description, not just the content list) says the product provides JCM and MCM morphs to improve 23 different joint rotations. But actually it only provides the morphs for 11 of the listed joint rotations, plus half of the morphs it's supposed to for two of the other 12.

Which works out to the product, as supplied to me via DIM, actually only containing HALF of what it is supposed to in a functional state. And what's especially annoying is that the most common mistake in DAZ products I get is faulty ERC formulae, but I can diagnose and fix those myself in minutes; but missing MORPH DELTAS I can't.

I find it hard to imagine how this happened. Either the missing morphs existed and are supposed to be in the product as sold, but someone - the PA or someone at DAZ - somehow accidentally deleted the morph deltas but not the channels; or it was decided - by the PA or someone at DAZ - to remove those morphs (sub-standard, problematic or whatever), but whoever did it accidentally deleted the morph deltas but not the channels, so the dials still appear in a loaded G3F but do nothing, AND forgot to amend the product page to remove the mentions of the joint rotations no longer improved. Well, there's a third possibility, but I really don't want to even think that might be true.

But that's it. Basically, as packaged for DIM anyway, the product only contains about half of what is claimed on the product page, plus creates a load of visible and hidden channels on loading G3F that do absolutely nothing.

DAZ needs to do one of two things, and PDQ.

Either:

If those missing morph deltas do exist and the improvers for those joint rotations listed above ARE supposed to be in the product, get hold of the proper morph .dsf files thaat actually do contain the morph deltas and produce an update.

Or:

If those missing morph deltas either do not exist or those morphs were intentionally dropped, then issue an update that REMOVES all the useless control and empty morph .dsf data files, and REWRITE the store page, removing the references in both 'Details' and 'What's Included and Features' to the non-existent/dropped morphs. And then, seeing as the customer would actually be getting about half the number of joint rotation corrections DAZ and the PA thought were worth 28.95 USD full price, 20.27 USD sale price, cut both full and sale price by about half and refund the difference to people who have already bought it on the basis of the original store product page specifications.

I am hoping the situation is the first of those, and we can get a properly working product as originally advertised with all the joint corrections.

But one thing is clear. DAZ need to have a REALLY LONG LOOK at their QA procedures. They have put out to paying customers a product HALF of which is faulty/missing. When I thought it was just the elbow morphs, I thought that was sloppy work from QA but just about understandable. But to miss the fact that, out of 23 joint rotation improvers advertised, TEN DO NOTHING (which is a lot easier to spot than something doing the WRONG thing - I noticed the missing elbow correctors about 30 seconds after G3F finished loading after instaalling the product) and TWO only half work, leaving only 11 that do what they should beggars belief. DAZ QA procedures - and staff - really need serious review. I've been a DAZ customer since 2004, and there has been a regular pattern of QA failures, but this one is on a whole new level and really takes the biscuit. If their QA people are overworked, they need to get more. This just is not acceptable.

Note 1:

I have created a new topic rather than added to the pervious one because I effectively derailed my own topic with the other one, writing a lot more about what was intended to be constructive criticism, arguing the product would have been better and more widely useful if it had been designed differently from how it was advertised on the store page. I'm starting a new topic because of the far more serious failures of the product to operate AS ADVERTISED than I had discovered when starting the other topic, and I would like to stay focused on that, not on whether it would have been better different anyway.

Note 2:

I believe that everythinng I have written in this post is accurate, fair, verifiable, balanced and justified. If any moderators somehow diasgree, I'd appreciate a discussion of edits rather then summary deletion. This is a real, significant failure of a product to deliver what is on the store page, and I have provided the detail that you can check yourself either or both testing with a G3F in DS, or just perusing the data /dsf files in a text editor. 20 morphs with no deltas; 10 promo specified joint rotations receiving no morphing despite every file and everything else but the deltas being present, and 2 other joint rotations only receiving bend forward morphing where the store page says it should have bend backward morphing too. Especially given the price of the product this is not good and should be aired.