SFS(Shape from Shading) is one of the class ill posed problems of Computer Vision. General SFS algorithm often involved some additional constraints

such as smoothness constraint

to find a unique solution. However

this is based on the assumption that the reconstructed surface is continuous. Concerning the disadvantage of tradition shape from shading algorithm

a new algorithm of shape from shading based on fractal constraint is proposed in this paper. The method first introduces a novel fractal constraint

then through formulating the SFS problem using techniques of linearization of the reflectance map and minimizaiton of an energy function calculates the surface height. The proposed method overcome the disadvantage of tradition shape from shading algorithm

that is

distortion of recovered result of the 3D surface causing from assumed smoothness constraint

and does not require any integrability constraint or artificial assumption on boundary conditions. Experimental results show that new method is better than tradition method in aspect of 3D surface reconstruction for natural scenery.