This is not "kind of close, but not as accurate as a ray traced image", it's just completely wrong. The whale itself is fine: sun comes from behind, and sun rays refract inside the whale to make it glow. Believable enough. But then the whale is somehow shining light on the clouds below it, as if the sun was high in the sky and slightly to the left. Which is decidedly not where the sun is. And then out of nowhere light from round church windows shines on the church - but nothing on the whale has that shape, and that side of the church isn't even facing the church

I can only conclude that this image is taken on a world with two sun (one in frame, one out of frame to the top left), and somewhere out of frame in the same direction are floating church windows. Even then we might need a third sun to make this work