Personally I prefer the Eevee render for this one, bloom looks nice. What do you guys think?
Eevee:
Cycles:
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eevee looks better…but the problem is u cant see the trees in the background in eevee but u can see it in cycles
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I couldn’t see any trees in the Cycles render. I had to copy the image into Photoshop to add an adjustment layer to lighten it up a whole lot before I saw any trees, especially the ones with eyes all the way in the back.
I think eevee is much better than the other. Purple light on top of the candle feels very realistic. It’s great!
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Cycles needs some compositing for a few effect built into eevee, like depth-of-field, “OpenGL” fog and bloom. What I call “OpenGL” fog is a background colour, which is blended with the image colour based on some function of Z-depth (distance from camera).
This type of fog does not need volume lighting. It is a very cheap calculation, but it doesn’t look very real. When a character moves and enters an area with denser fog, the transition looks strange, because fog just appears instead of looking like a cloud or a wall of dust. This cheap fog does not make lights glow (not a diffuse volumetric shader).
I have attached my compositing nodes for Cycles, which add bloom and very light fog to my chess set renders. Fog is inserted using AlphaOver. Bloom with the Glare node. The Fog Glare is the only effect looking like eevee’s bloom. The mist is directly computed as a layer by Cycles. It applies the requested “fog function” to the depth. I am using a blurred box mask to reduce the fog in the sky, in order to let the stars shine. The whole sky is a processed background image. Recoloring is also done in Blender.
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Also, I am under the impression that there is some issue with the lighting in Cycles. It looks like it is lit from above and front. The edge of the candle does not project any shadow.
Maybe the flame is not the only light in the scene ? Or maybe its size is different from its appearance ?
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Thank you for the tip! Very useful 
No trees, too dark.
Nice lantern and candle.
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