Some people do completely non-destructive modelling in Blender using its modifier stack. You can see an example of that here: https://youtu.be/Atw16f8wZ6Y

I'm also a big fan of Houdini, though, and would recommend the free edition to anyone wanting to learn. It's the most fully featured piece of free software I've ever used. I almost can't believe that it's free, it's so good!