There seems to be a shift of brightness in your end result (gamma shift). This is such a complicated topic that I can not help you in that regard. But give this massive post a look.
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=101253&hilit=gamma+shiftBack to your Question about Quality:
I observed that the quality of an H264 Export can vary between different Programs and in my opinion the H264 Export in Resolve is only of medium quality even in the Studio Version where you will have some more options to tweak the H264 Export.
Instead of using Resolve to create a High End H264 file I would advise you to export a high Quality Codec like DNxHR HQX 10bitor ProRes 422HQ (or better) instead and then doing the transcode into H264 or (better) H265 in some other Software like Handbrake which is free on Mac and PC. It is not simple to use but very good when you understand what you are doing.
Once I was asked to create a 10min long H.264 with HD resolution that should only use 30mb of space. No chance to make that look good with the Resolve export. But in Handbrake I was able to get a very good result for H.264 and a fantastic result in H.265 (with the cost of very long render Times. I think it was something like 3hours).
But if you really want to enhance the render quality within Resolve then you definitely should
activate Multi-pass encode. And you can try the software renderer by
deactivating Use hardware acceleration if available. It will be somewhat slower, but you may have different options that may enhance quality.
But like I said. Dedicated transcoders like Handbrake may give you better results.
Resolve Studio 18.x / i7 12700k / Windows 10 (128GB Ram) / GeForce GTX 4070 TI Super 16GB / Tangent Wave Tablet / 3 Monitors + 1 Reference Monitor (by Intensity Pro)