GCharb
IMO Houdini is the best DCC out there for VFX and CFX, there is no doubt in my mind about that, it is also very adept at direct modelling, with or without the Modeller plugin (I never used the Modeller plugin TBH), again, just watch the PolyMarvels YouTube channel, but there are things that Houdini just can't do, like sculpting or texture painting, you need a separate application for that...
ZBrush is still the king of sculpting, no question about that, the UI is still a bit clunky to me, but once you are used to it, there is no real limits to what you can sculpt in ZBrush, as it can handle hundreds of millions of polygons (I suggest at least 64GB of RAM to be able to use ZBrush to its full potential), just look at all the great artwork on ZBrush Central, ZBrush is amazing.
But ZBrush also has limitations, it is pretty good at auto retopology, but it is somewhat lacking for manual retopology, it is not the best at UV mapping either, ZModeler is a nightmare IMHO, and you can't paint PBR textures with it.
The second best at sculpting is 3D Coat, Voxel Sculpting is awesome, and the new live boolean is better than the one in ZBrush IMHO, it is the best tool I have ever used for retopology, better than Topogun or Retopoflow (Blender plugin), it is also really good at UV mapping, and it has the reputation of being better at PBR texture painting than Substance Painter, it also has top notch modelling and kitbash tools.
Another viable option for sculpting/painting is Mudbox, it is dead simple, it can handle high poly counts, but you can't create a base mesh with it, you need to either use one of the provided base mesh, or you need to create one in another application.
Pablo Dobarro, a former Blender developer, improved the Blender sculpting tools, he developed some very cool sculpting brushes for Blender, he also developed the Voxel Remesher (very cool), and a few other goodies.
But you can't sculpt high frequency details in Blender, mainly because Blender just can't handle large polycount like the other sculpting software can, your only option for high frequency details is to texture them, which gives mixed results, takes a lot of time, and it is not the way professional character artists work in the industry.
In 2021 Pablo Dobarro published a proposal on the Blender Developer's blog (see link bellow), in his proposal he acknowledges the limitations of Blender and the importance of high polycount for sculpting, so he proposed that Blender sculpting be handled in a separate application, one that does not have such heavy polycount limitations, the Blender Institute rejected his proposal, last I checked Pablo has left the Blender community and is now developing a VR sculpting application.
Asset Creation Pipeline Design [code.blender.org]
As for retopology, you need Retopoflow to have decent retopology tools in Blender, you need a plugin for decent UV mapping tools as well, and Blender sucks hard at texture painting, even with a plugin like BPainter, and the modelling tools are more than 15 years old.
I am 59 years old, I have been animating (2D) since I was 12, I have been at 3D since the late 80s, I used many pieces of software over the years, and I learned that the KISS principle is the best way to go, the less software I use while still being able to do the job at hand in the shortest amount of time, the better.
So I use two different pieces of software these days, Houdini and 3D Coat, these two can do anything I could ever need for my work/production, and they cost me a mere 248 USD a year (3D Coat cost 48 USD a year for updates after the initial purchase which include 12 months of updates), I truly believe that these two are the best combo for 3D artists/freelancers these days!
I don't do much classical modelling anymore, instead I use 3D Coat Voxel sculpting tools and do an auto-retopology when done, it's much faster this way, and it allows me to create models that would be next to impossible to model the old fashion way!
