Systems and methods of scene and action capture using imaging system incorporating 3D LIDAR

A method, comprising:

• obtaining a first 2D image of a first portion of a scene from a first view point;
• obtaining a first 3D image of the first portion of the scene from the first view point, wherein the first 3D image includes a first point cloud, and wherein the first 3D image is obtained by a 3D imaging system;
• determining an absolute location of the first view point;
• associating an absolute location with at least some of the points included in the first point cloud, wherein associating an absolute location with at least some of the points in the first cloud includes correlating the at least some of the points in the first cloud with an absolute location reference, wherein the at least some of the points in the first point cloud associated with the locations are geolocated, and wherein the absolute location reference is an Earth-centered reference or absolute location information is provided by a global positioning system (GPS) receiver;
• orthorectifying the first 2D image;
• associating at least some of the points in the first point cloud with at least some of the pixels in the first 2D image;
• fusing pixels in the first 2D image to points in the first point cloud to create a first fused image, wherein in the fused image each point in the first point cloud is associated with color information from the first 2D image.