Abstract: A method for fitting 3D morphable model to images is proposed by combining hypersphere manifold constraint of face space,gradient-based heuristic global optimization,spherical harmonic representation of illumination,and direct visibility of convex hull points.First,camera and shape parameters are solved by the global optimization algorithm under hypersphere manifold constraint of shape.Second,correspondences of object points and image points are determined by these parameters and the direct visibility of convex hull points.Finally,according to these correspondences,illumination and albedo parameters are computed by the global optimization algorithm under hypersphere manifold constraint of albedo.Quantitative experiment results show that the proposed method can recovers all parameters of 3DMM from a single image without segmented fitting,artificial estimation of parameters,coarse-to-fine strategy or complex combination of features.