I like the first one better and think it’s great. I can see the flatness that you are talking about. I think if you did some color adjustment on the second one you can get the lighter look with the depth of the second one. You can do it in the compositor, but I’d recommend trying with color management in the properties editor on the render tab first. You can adjust this after you render and see the results in the render results (Image Editor). If memory serves me right, I’m thinking a slight gamma adjustment and switch to high or very high contrast. Also, this might be one of those times where filmic would work better than AGX.
