So I came across some lighting and shadowing issues when I was modeling for UE4 and noticed the reason was that the light maps were bleeding over from inside the object to the exterior.
Sometime I model the quick way not the correct way, using a bunch of Cubes can get you pretty far in modeling.
Anyway, I came across this Plugin Magic Merge (http://nitro4d.com/blog/freebie/magic-merge/) What it does is merge objects together but also removes any planes that are inside of each other. This way your dinosaur you made with a bunch of cubes you only see the exterior faces of the model.
I made a quick video to showcase it. Hope this helps some fellow C4D users out.
Cinema 4D to Unreal Engine 4 - Magic Merge - YouTube
Without question, Magic Merge is a nice to have tool. (and there is no excuse to have it not, because it’s free)
But you cannot blame the app for modelling quick&dirty.
Much more important then how to optimize combined meshes in C4D is the question how to export a mesh with shading,
multiple materials and a second UV Tag for lightmaps properly to UE4.
Because right now with 17.032 and previouse versions of C4D, there is an issue with the fbx Export that will destroy
the smoothing if there are multiple UV or Material Tags.
I allready saw a changelog of 17.048 that specifically mentioned this issue as resolved,
but this update isn’t out yet.
The thread title raised my hope that someone found or made a plugin for exporting from C4D to UE4.
In the end i just found what i allready knew.
As for your Text example, boole gave me the exact same result as Magic Merge.
Just enable hide new edges and remove N-gons afterwards.
Usually i avoid Boole for most modelling jobs, but in this case it works:
Top is Boole, below MagicMerge.