Carrara 5 is a good choice it has a lot of features that you cant find in other 3D programs for this price, it has a fantasic render engine (very fast), physics engine, sky lab, tree lab, awesome 3D clouds, automation tools and more.

Every time I load up Carrara I find a new way of using it as far as cloth or hair you can intergrate your poser charaters via transposer 2 that comes with Carrara 5 pro not included in the Standard version (which I use) but avaliable as a plugin. I wish it had native cloth and hair dynamics but if you have the above mentioned plugin your not left in the dark.

I have other 3D modeling programs but use Carrara the most because it streamlines my workflow.

The modeling features are good but I use Hexagon instead because of workflow.

I could spend all day talking about Carrara and its features, Try out the demo what works for one may not work for another.