How do I reverse-project 2D points into 3D?

Question

I have 4 2D points in screen-space, and I need to reverse-project them back into 3D space. I know that each of the 4 points is a corner of a 3D-rotated rigid rectangle, and

Answer 1

Thanks to @Vegard for an excellent answer. I cleaned up the code a little bit:

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

class Point2:
    def __init__(self,x,y):
        self.x = x
        self.y = y

class Point3:
    def __init__(self,x,y,z):
        self.x = x
        self.y = y
        self.z = z

# Known 2D coordinates of our rectangle
i0 = Point2(318, 247)
i1 = Point2(326, 312)
i2 = Point2(418, 241)
i3 = Point2(452, 303)

# 3D coordinates corresponding to i0, i1, i2, i3
r0 = Point3(0, 0, 0)
r1 = Point3(0, 0, 1)
r2 = Point3(1, 0, 0)
r3 = Point3(1, 0, 1)

mat = [
    [1, 0, 0, 0],
    [0, 1, 0, 0],
    [0, 0, 1, 0],
    [0, 0, 0, 1],
]

def project(p, mat):
    #print mat
    x = mat[0][0] * p.x + mat[0][1] * p.y + mat[0][2] * p.z + mat[0][3] * 1
    y = mat[1][0] * p.x + mat[1][1] * p.y + mat[1][2] * p.z + mat[1][3] * 1
    w = mat[3][0] * p.x + mat[3][1] * p.y + mat[3][2] * p.z + mat[3][3] * 1
    return Point2(720 * (x / w + 1) / 2., 576 - 576 * (y / w + 1) / 2.)

# The squared distance between two points a and b
def norm2(a, b):
    dx = b.x - a.x
    dy = b.y - a.y
    return dx * dx + dy * dy

def evaluate(mat): 
    c0 = project(r0, mat)
    c1 = project(r1, mat)
    c2 = project(r2, mat)
    c3 = project(r3, mat)
    return norm2(i0, c0) + norm2(i1, c1) + norm2(i2, c2) + norm2(i3, c3)    

def perturb(mat, amount):
    from copy import deepcopy
    from random import randrange, uniform
    mat2 = deepcopy(mat)
    mat2[randrange(4)][randrange(4)] += uniform(-amount, amount)
    return mat2

def approximate(mat, amount, n=1000):
    est = evaluate(mat)
    for i in xrange(n):
        mat2 = perturb(mat, amount)
        est2 = evaluate(mat2)
        if est2 < est:
            mat = mat2
            est = est2

    return mat, est

for i in xrange(1000):
    mat,est = approximate(mat, 1)
    print mat
    print est

The approximate call with .1 did not work for me, so I took it out. I ran it for a while too, and last I checked it was at

[[0.7576315397559887, 0, 0.11439449272592839, -0.314856490473439], 
[0.06440497208710227, 1, -0.5607502645413118, 0.38338196981556827], 
[0, 0, 1, 0], 
[0.05421620936883742, 0, -0.5673977598434641, 2.693116299312736]]

with an error around 0.02.