The invention discloses a virtual viewpoint synthesis method based on depth and shade information, comprising steps of: (1) defining a 3D plotting equation of a plotting method based on a depth image; (2) according to the spatial positions of the reference viewpoints and the virtual viewpoints, forming a pixel plotting sequence; (3) adopting a horizontal half pixel plotting method based on a depth image, referring to the main viewpoint, plotting an image of the virtual viewpoints; (4) according to the shade information of the auxiliary viewpoints, processing shade compensation on the virtual viewpoint image, to attain a virtual viewpoint image of high resolution; (5) converting the image of high resolution to attain an image of original resolution; (6) adopting an asymmetry linear interpolation method to process residual cavity compensation; (7) processing block effect smoothing to attain the virtual viewpoint synthesis image of high quality. The invention is suitable for parallel optical axis camera array mode, wherein the virtual viewpoints for synthesis are between the main viewpoint and the auxiliary viewpoints. Therefore, the invention can effectively synthesize virtual viewpoint images of high quality.