To solve the difficulty in obtaining good texture details using surface mesh reconstruction algorithms, a surface mesh optimization algorithm based on shape from shading (SFS) is proposed. The surface mesh model is chosen as the initial value. Then, the mesh vertex is projected onto a visual image to obtain its corresponding SFS depth value. The photometric consistency constraint algorithm is used to fuse the SFS constraint algorithm as the data item, and the curvature constraint algorithm of the model is used as the smoothing item to form the mesh vertex optimization energy function. Finally, the gradient descent method is used to minimize energy as well as adjust the mesh vertices and optimize its model. In the DTU dataset, the proposed algorithm outperforms the input mesh model by 14.5% and the existing mainstream surface mesh optimization model by 1.12%. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can substantially improve the texture details of surface mesh models, the accuracy of mesh models, and the effect of reconstruction models.