This paper presents a novel approach for bas-relief generation and synthesis. In contrast to previous methods, we divide this problem into two parts: the selection of the best view and arrangement of the relief layout. Taking these into account, we incorporate the visual saliency and photographic composition rules into the bas-relief generation. Additionally, a nonlinear compression function is used to compress the models, and finally, we implement surface parameterization by directly manipulating the mesh triangles to generate curved surface bas-relief.We validate our approach through a variety of models. The results indicate that the proposed approach is effective to adapt different types of target surface with topology unchanged. Comparing with conventional methods, our approach is able to effectively produce bas-relief with a reasonable layout and distinct details.