Babumbol

Long ago I used Modo to export a not-so-complex SDS geometry as STP. The results got translated as good at it can get. But for the engineers, they were still unusable. In the end one guy had to rebuild everything from scratch. As Dasfrodo already wrote, the underlying principles of polygonmeshes and nurbs are way too different.

If you are just trying to get a hang of C4D, then that Mac Mini will be sufficient. As soon as you start to progress and build heavy scenes or work with fuilds and the like, you may want to consider a proper rig (64GB Ram would be my suggestion). And no matter how cool the Macs architecture: rendering times won't be comparable with a proper workstation.

Yeah, put a spherical map on a Sky object. Lot's of HDRIs out there, for this. If I remember correctly, Blochi had a milky way HDRI in his sIBL archive: http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html But you can, of course build your own universe in 3D and render out a Sky Box. For this, set the camera on the Scene origin point and render out a square image with a FOV of 90° in every direction. These images you can arrange to a skybox, and convert it to a spherical map. Lot's of tools out there, to work with HDRIs: http://www.hdrlabs.com/tools/links.html Some renderers allow you to render out spherical maps directly, without the skybox hassle. This way you just setup the environment, render out the spherical and use it directly in another scene. You will have to use pretty HiRes renderings, if you want them to be used as backgrounds. 8 to 16k at a minimum.

Sometimes, when plugins are the cause of the crash, Cinema can't/won't save a recovery scene. For example, before I start the interactive renderer of corona, I hit ctr+s. When corona crashes, cinema never saves the recovery scene.

Judging from the picture, I would say it splits at the top part of the circular area.

This is a tough one. I would go with SDS Modeling, too. If you have the bottle at hand, why don't you try some photogrammetry? Spray paint with a dull color, then make lot's of pictures and look what Meshroom comes up with (it's free: https://alicevision.org/#meshroom ) This wont be usable as end product, but it could give you a good starting point and good idea of the basic form. But you could also try to model the basic form in Moi3D, bring the Model in C4D, Retopo and make the ridges. Or, just sculpt everything in ZBrush.

Instances messing up vertex normals is new to me. Afaik the symmetry object welds the geometry. Whenever you modify the point numbers of a mesh, the vertex normals get messed up. Not different in Modo, f.e. Although there are better tools to fix this. When working with CAD data, try to avoid lossing the vertex normal information. Sometimes the phong-shading does the job, but more often you will find errors/funny reflections in the renderings afterward. Especially with complex geometry.

You could try and add some debris at corners. This is where the dirt keeps piling up. I mean stuff like deformed cans, paper, whatever trash. Otherwise the clean line where the wall meets the ground (don't know how to explain that properly) always looks odd. Because there are seldom such straight lines, even in urban environments. There is always a bump. And maybe you could try some wet surfaces. Like after the rain. With puddles on the ground, reflecting the nice neon lights. That's like a free detail enhancement. Regarding cables, you can use spline dynamics. If remembering correctly, there even is a tutorial in the C4D inhelp. Just don't forget to freeze the cable in it's preferred state and kick the dynamic stuff afterward.

Hey, big thanks for all the info! Will dig into this.

Nice one! How did you animate the planetary gear? I thought gears is only for setting the rpm and syncing gears with a fixed axis? Had to animate something quite similar last week, but a little bit more komplex (hammer drill planetary gears with different gear transformations on the planets), and failed utterly 😯

Originally it's a Lightwave PlugIn especially designed for architectural modeling. I used it a lot in Lightwave. Love it's snapping features and one-click-solutions for building slated roofs, floors, stairs, etc. The provided library isnt't stylish, but you can expand it with your own stuff. Standard buildings can be modeled quite fast with this toolset. But it isn't limited to architectural stuff only.