I would not call Cinema 4D a killer of Element 3D.
I have rendered a scene with 2.6 millions of polygons.
Would like to know what time Cinema 4D has to render this sequence. How does DOF and MB and AO render (time)?
In Elements 3D, I can quickly change my items to others and press render. This test render in AE with Element 3D just take 32 min in full 1080P.



My workstation:
OS: OS X 10.8.3
CPU: i7-3770K @ 3.50GHz
RAM: 32GB

No I do not think CS7 will kill the most useful plugin for AE.

Link: VideoCopilot