Sometimes all you have to do to get some fantastic looking shadows in Cinema 4D is to pop on the Ambient Occlusion (AO) option in CINEMA 4D's Advanced Render module. This tutorial introduces you to the basics of AO.
When you edit a model that is being deformed, by default Cinema 4D switches the model to its undeformed state while you edit it. If, on the other hand, you'd rather edit the model directly in its deformed state, you can do that too as shown in this quick tip.