Provided is a method and apparatus that may generate a three-dimensional (3D) object from a two-dimensional (2D) image, and render the generated 3D object.Light source information may be extracted from the 2D image using a characteristic of the 2D image, and property information associated with the 2D image may be extracted based on the light source information. In particular, specular information, scattering information, and the like may be stored in a database using a plurality of samples. Since pecular information or scattering information similar to an input image may be retrieved from the data base, property information may be quickly extracted.