On the basis of the assumption that the human face belongs to a linear class, a multiple-deformation model is proposed to recover face shape from a few points on a single 2D image. Compared to the conventional methods, this study has the following advantages. First, the proposed modified 3D sparse deforming model is a noniterative approach that can compute global translation efficiently and accurately. Subsequently, the overfitting problem can be alleviated based on the proposed multiple deformation model. Finally, by keeping the main features, the texture generated is realistic. The comparison results show that this novel method outperforms the existing methods by using ground truth data and that realistic 3D faces can be recovered efficiently from a single photograph.