The profilometry based on the fringe contrast is a vertical 3D measurement technique, which can measure the complex objects with acute changes in their surfaces. A modified contrast measurement profilometry based on the previous method is proposed. In this method, sinusoidal fringes are projected on the surface of the testing object laid in front of imaging plane of the fringe and captured through a beam splitter by a CCD camera. We can obtain the fringe contrast using phase-shifting technique, and then restore the height of the object through the map of the contrast and the height. In the measurement process, we only need to capture fringe patterns in one position, without changing the image plane in several times, so it is faster and more convenient than the existing method. The experimental results prove this method can restore the height of the complex object effectively.