Optical measurement has been widely used in many fields of science and engineering, such as CAD/CAM, machine vision, quality inspection, reverse engineering, etc, due to its properties of non-contact and high speed. Fringe projection methods have caused much more attentions in full field measurement and insensitive to the change of the objects’ reflectivity. This paper reviews state-of-the art progresses in the 3D shape measuring methods using fringe projection techniques. A comparison of the existing methods is performed with their advantages and drawbacks also are pointed out.