There is no right or wrong nowadays, the software is not the limitation. There is a free Clarisse PLE you can use with LW and Carrara. LW/Carrara supports modeling while Clarisse supports compositing, somewhat different apps.

Clarisse has an indie version for 995, for 1 man studios, they would probably laugh at bad renders/scenes and not specifically DS/Carrara content. Even with pro tools, it takes time to model and kit bashing should be OK nowadays...