Abstract: A rapid 3D measurement technique based on color coding fringe projection is proposed. The 3D shape information of an object can be obtained by only one color-encoded fringe pattern image. The color-encoded stripes were embedded into a sinusoidal fringe pattern in order to get the absolute shape of an object. Phase unwrapping was performed according to the color-encoded stripes. A novel color coding method using four colors was designed. The sinusoidal G component of a color image was used to obtain the phase by Fourier transform method, the R and B components were used to identify the fringe order so that phase unwrapping can be easily done. Only one frame of color image is needed to get the 3D information of an object, experiments indicate that the 3D information of an object can be obtained accurately and rapidly.