The present disclosure describes systems and techniques relating to generating three dimensional (3D) models from range sensor data. According to an aspect, frames of range scan data captured using one or more three dimensional (3D) sensors are obtained, where the frames correspond to different views of an object or scene; point clouds for the frames are registered with each other by maximizing coherence of projected occluding boundaries of the object or scene within the frames using an optimization algorithm with a cost function that computes pairwise or global contour correspondences; and the registered point clouds are provided for use in 3D modeling of the object or scene. Further, the cost function, which maximizing contour coherence, can be used with more than two point clouds for more than two frames at a time in a global optimization framework.