2-D EXTENDED IMAGE GENERATION FROM 3-D DATA EXTRACTED FROM A VIDEO SEQUENCE

A method of generating a 2-D extended image from a video sequence representing a natural 3-D scene first determines motion parameters for a camera that recorded the scene with respect to a bakcground object from the video sequence using a structure-from-motion algorithm. The motion parameters include a rotation matrix, a translation vector and a depth map representing the depth of each point in the background object from the camera. Next from the motion parameters and depth map the 2-D extended image is generated for the background object as a composition of the images from the video sequence using a plane perspective projection technique. The background object may be layered as a function of depth and flatness criteria to form a set of layered 2-D extended images for the background object from the video sequence.