I also love the way light reflects off of fish. We have an iridescence system already but it does seem to struggle on fish that are more reflective than iridescent. It's more of a problem if the fish is silvery because the color on the screen is already close to white. We have been discussing ways to improve this for a while now, so it's on the list.

I've been thinking about it for a while, I think it's also the fact the fish themselves dont have complex normal maps, so the shadows of the individual scales aren't really there. maybe the best way to show off shininess is to focus on the shadows instead? thats very likely easier said than done though. I guess im just musing. Thanks for your response!

I've been experimenting with it and I think there's a couple things overlapping here. Obviously there are a lot of ways this could be approached. The normal map could do it, but in my previous testing it came off more realistic and visually noisy than the art direction I'm aiming for. Anyway I think we're zeroing in on something that is an improvement, so it should get better soon. Thank you for your input!

Thanks in part to this conversation the next update (Feb 3rd) will have much improved fish shininess. Thanks for talking with me about it; I think it was worth the extra attention!