As for Carrara there are several people that model with it (I just picked up a nice dedicated modeling tutorial for Carrara that is making things go smoothly so far), its not got all the cool shortcuts but if you visit the Carrara forum and look at some of the stuff kixum (sp) he is listed at the top of the forums I think makes some great stuff with it. Stu uses both Carrara and 3d-coat and does some cool things with em. Lot of different modelers out there. There is NVil by digital fossils. I have it installed from the free trial but haven't had a chance to really use it but looks very nice.