WIP: Interactive Face Scanner with Unity + MediaPipe

Hey Hive!

I wanted to share a new project I’ve been working on. I’m developing a face scanning effect in Unity using MediaPipe, and I thought it’d be cool to show you the progress, how it works, and what it could be used for.

I love building interactive experiences that surprise people, and this is a foundation I plan to use for events, activations, or installations with large displays.

What am I building?

It’s a Face Scanner that detects a person’s face in real time and generates a custom mesh with animated lines simulating a futuristic scanning effect.

The detection uses MediaPipe’s FaceMesh, and the visuals are built dynamically in Unity with procedural mesh generation and custom shaders.

How does MediaPipe work?

MediaPipe is a framework developed by Google that allows real-time perception through machine learning models.
In this project, I’m using the FaceMesh solution, which detects 468 landmarks on the user’s face using just a regular camera.

It runs fast and efficiently on CPU or GPU, and provides coordinates for each facial point which I then use in Unity to generate a 3D mesh and lines that follows the user’s face in real time and let me do these awesome efects using c# shaders too.

The numbers are bit small but these are all the landmarks MediaPipe detects. I used the ones that are highlighted to create the final white lines effect and for the blue scan effect i created a mesh using all the triangles and a shader. 

What could it be used for?

• Booths at expos and events

• Interactive ads or marketing activations

• Educational/entertainment museum setups

• AR games with face-based mechanics

Tech Stack

• Unity (C#)

• MediaPipe FaceMesh

• Custom shaders in Unity

• Built for Windows (but can be ported to Android)

I'd love your input!

Can you imagine this as part of a minigame or a larger interactive experience?
Would you use something like this for a project?