A method to reconstruct 3D model of an object includes receiving with a processor a set of training data including images of the object from various viewpoints; learning a prior comprised of a mean shape describing a commonality of shapes across a category and a set of weighted anchor points encoding similarities between instances in appearance and spatial consistency; matching anchor points across instances to enable learning a mean shape for the category; and modeling the shape of an object instance as a warped version of a category mean, along with instance-specific details.