i have experience with carrara 6 pro and hexagon.
carrara 6 hasn't changend much from carrara 5. it's super intuitive and nice to work with, rigging is easy, though it might be a bit too automated for special needs. the biggest plus is the fast and really easy to set up GI renderer.
right now, there is no chance to get animated models from carrara to 3dgs (or any engine), as their fbx exporter is seriously broken. they promised that tehy will deal with the problem in one of the next updates, "but not the very next one". given the long development cycle for carrara, it might still take some time. i wouldn't invest too much hope in it.
hexagon is a nicely designed application for subdiv modelling and seamless skin painting. it's actually pretty old and still displays the eovia icon (the company hexagon and carrara once belonged to). it would be a really awesome tool if it were stable. i couldn't even apply a single subdiv step, it crashed. i was really disappointed. then i figured out that mostly dual core users have these problems. restrict it to one core and it might be ok.
sadly, i cannot recommend both, though i'd really love to, because they are intuitive tool and provide a nice workflow. but they don't keep their promises.
