You referring to that thread talking about lightwave and whatever else he said was a replacement to Carrara? The article you linked to has the much better options. I would actually suggest that Blender is really the only option you need. Everything he mentioned in that article can be done in Blender by itself if you really wanted to. I would say Houdini does have the better particle system for animation, but everything else is perfectly fine to do in Blender alone if you were so inclined.