METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR RENDERING AND COMBINING IMAGES

An image processing system for imaging a scene to mosaic, selecting a new viewpoint of the scene, and rendering a synthetic image from the mosaic of the scene from that new viewpoint. The synthesized image is then combined with a second image. The combination of the second image and the synthetic image generates a composite image containing a realistic combination of objects in the second image and the scene. Using this system, a production set or other scene need only be created once, then imaged by the system. Thereafter, through image processing, any view of the scene can be synthesized and combined with separately imaged performers or other objects to generate the composite image. As such, a production set or other scene can be repetitively reused without recreating the physical scene.