Here is my submission:
Alien Planet
Pure, competing
Blender 2.81 Cycles + Compositor
Inspired by No Man’s Sky
The weekend challenges are a great way to experiment with new things, which is what I have been focusing on.
This is a continued experimentation including the adaptive subsurface that I did in with my lava submsission two weeks ago. I also tried to do some volumetrics, which I have avoided a bit because of slow render times and noise from my past experiences. But now, I have discovered ways to optimise rendering and do things much more efficiently, which finally allows for more freedom.
For example, I did not realise I could optimise volumetrics in Cycles. This render only took 7 minutes at 128 samples. (GTX 1060)
I also experimented with the compositor and film settings a lot more. Just messing around with things like contrast and gamma can transform an average render into a cinematic one.
(Edit made to fix up my sentences)