Estimating a pose of an articulated 3D object model (4) by a computer is done by •obtaining a sequence of source images (10) and therefrom corresponding source image segments (13) with objects (14) separated from the image background; •matching such a sequence (51) with sequences (52) of reference silhouettes (13′), determining one or more selected sequences of reference silhouettes (13′) forming a best match; •for each of these selected sequences of reference silhouettes (13′), retrieving a reference pose that is associated with one of the reference silhouettes (13′); and •computing an estimate of the pose of the articulated object model (4) from the retrieved reference pose or poses. The result of these steps is an initial pose estimate, which then can be used in further steps, for example, for maintaining local consistency between pose estimates from consecutive frames, and global consistency over a longer sequence of frames.