How was your day?

But what I don't understand is that it'd be just as useful, if not more time and energy efficient to use a 3D rendering program like Cinema4D :I

I don't know. I would think it would be more taxing to completely building and render a 3D model in a program, unless you have a lot of experience with it. Plus there's the idea of a tangible item, though you don't use it since you just submit the images of it in the end.

I know at my university, in graphic design classes, product packaging must be created from scratch. Sounds like the same concept, albeit larger scale.