A Rumor will have been around the whole world before the Truth has its shoes on.
If only the Truth stopped being such a precious F'in princess and started running barefoot... ICE was evolutionary, fresh, new, well thought, much needed, and an inspiration to many when it came out. It is, however, not revolutionary, unique, and one of its core implementation choices is widely available. It is not only natural, but sensible, that other softwares over time will get or converge towards something similar. The struggle to unify things and the abuse of VOPs over all other OPs in Houdini, propietary systems from here to Dreamworks going through half the other 500+ vfx/animation companies, new products... it all points towards what makes ICE what is is becoming the new golden standard. Hats off to Soft's old team for seeing that and making it happen... What, 5 or 6 years ago? Do learn to deal with the fact that it WILL be available in other softwares though, and it won't be strictly ICE (which AFAIK has already been deemed unportable if tried as a transplant), it's just the equivalent of what ICE did so well, so early.
