This is our second dev diary for Shark Dentist, so let's continue our OR inspection. You are a dentist. Your patients are sharks. They are anesthetized (for now) and they weigh three tons. Fix the tooth. Don't wake the patient.
Today we want to talk about the patient itself, because in this game the shark isn't a monster you fight. It's the room you work in.
Why shark skin got main-character treatment
In most games you see a shark from a distance, in dark water, for about 4 seconds. In ours you spend the entire session with your hands inside its mouth and your face 20 cm from its hide. At that range nothing hides: every pore, every scar, every gill slit is on camera the whole time.
So the shark got the texture work usually reserved for a main character — because that's what it is.
From grey mesh to an animal
The model arrives clean and grey. Then into Substance 3D Painter, passes in order: base hide tone, then countershading: dark on top, pale underneath, the way real sharks are lit from above. Then the markings and the damage. Scars, worn edges, the sandpaper roughness that makes skin read as skin and not rubber.
The gills and the stripes are what you'll actually be staring at, so they took the longest.
One animal, several patients
A tiger shark, a blue one and a great white are the same body wearing a different hide: one mesh, three materials, three patients. Every session puts a different shark on your table, and you don't get to choose which one you get.
A different animal
And then there's the hammerhead you met at the top of this post.
It isn't the same shark in a different coat. Different silhouette, different head, different problem for whoever has to reach inside it. When a patient's eyes sit at the ends of a metre-wide bar, "stay out of its field of view" stops being simple advice.
That's the animation you never want to see from the inside. The jaw closes in under a fifth of a second. Your hand is in there considerably longer than that.
What's next
Next diary we leave the modelling software and get our hands on the instruments: why drills fit sharks better than human dentist devices.
Which patient or instrument would you like to see on the table? Tell us, we read everything.
Shark Dentist is coming to Steam. Wishlist it here:
And come talk to us in Discord: https://discord.gg/rbfxhqx95V
See you in the OR!