Three-dimensional shape measurement based on color complementary phase coding method

•The limitation of length of coding sequence can be broken.•Jump errors are corrected by the complementary sequence of red and blue.•The hue and intensity information can be extracted by utilizing HSV image format.•Projected image counts are dramatically reduced.•Color complementary coding can be used for discontinuous diffuse object measurement. Fringe projection profilometry (FPP) has been widely studied and used in three dimensional (3D) shape measurement because of its non-contact and high accuracy. By analyzing the captured fringe patterns, phase data can be demodulated with regard to depth. However, measurement efficiency decreases as number of the projected patterns increases. Therefore, it is a challenge to improve the projection rate, while ensuring measurement accuracy. To overcome this challenge, this paper proposes a complementary encoding method to correct the jump error of the unwrapping phase based on color phase-encoded fringe projection. Meanwhile, number of the projected patterns is reduced by using color modulation technique to generate composite fringes. The 3D reconstruction results of the proposed method are verified by qualitative experiments. Moreover, effectiveness of its error correction is discussed by quantitative experiments.