Sent you one as well.

I did some poking around and the main culprit is the lack of linear lighting. Once that's set up, lighting is less of a hit and miss hassle. You'll need less lights and "trickery". Just turning on color management and replacing the spotlights with physical (area) lights helped a lot. The rest of it is just color grading and effects in post, better render times and more flexibility.




And this one, I still really like this one



And the video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb2rUaMjeM4