[Brian Jones]

can’t tell from the pic from what you describe. if they are all separate polys for the ‘windows’ it doesn’t make sense. I wouldn’t boole that many windows, using materials would be better or cloning the windows… as for the S&T I’d have to see the file (or just one building of it).

[Brian Jones]

put a light or luminant object in the right place to get the reflections you need (it can be in the field of view but with a compositing tag to make it invisible to the camera but still adds reflections to the scene (etc))

[Brian Jones]

An imported loop will be pixels which means it has to be fine enough detail (close enough to the waves) and you’ll be able to see the squares. So be sure to have a big enough resolution. However, remember that C4D has a number of noises that can be looped then you don’t have to worry about resolution

[Brian Jones]

Corrupted the file likely, doesn’t happen very often in C4D but does happen occasionally. Reimport maybe

[Brian Jones]

not seeing anything obvious (which may not mean anything) but how were the splines made? All the visible ones are Subdivided Intermediate points all the invisible ones (points invisible too) are Natural…

[Brian Jones]

if I understand your description turn off the Color and Reflectance channels and use Transparency – just set the color in transparency to something other than white, for only being visible with something behind it or with some Luminance to always see it – or a combo of Alpha and Luminance. That works as long as your object isn’t intersecting some other object or sitting on a floor or something, as long as there is a little separation it should work.

[Brian Jones]

it works with Physical renderer but the Hair looks somewhat different with Physical… Hair is volumetric with Standard renderer, so is Pyrocluster so it must be an interaction there (though a quick scan of Limitations in Hair and Pyrocluster doesn’t make note of Hair/Pyro problems for whatever that’s worth)

[Brian Jones]

there is no official Maxon presence here so if you haven’t I would submit a report to Maxon Support as well

[Brian Jones]

hard to say without seeing it (the file). Perhaps the file could have been output differently but some things you can’t do much with. You might be able to join the pieces inside your object in C4D then optimize a bit before trying to smooth but that’s hard to tell without seeing the file. It doesn’t look hopeless just by the image but that’s not enough info.
What was the original format (before you opened it in the open source)?

[Brian Jones]

go into the cameras Coords and set R.B to 0