Hey,
Is there any ROS package for it already? Or how would you approach this?
Cheers
Some time ago I have been playing with this topic, converting pointclouds from a Velodyne to range-images using PCL.
You can find some code here (pointcloud_to_rangeimage) to get you started.
Disclaimer : It requires some extra work and polishing.
Cheers.
Hey Jeremie. Thanks for your helpful reply. I’m using a VLP16 (i saw the config file for a Velodyne 16 in the devel branch). Do you have by any chance a before/after shot of the latest version? I think it would be quite helpful to see what the output would look like 
As this topic got closed I’ve added a link to the ROS answer thread:
https://answers.ros.org/question/277191/create-2d-depth-image-from-sparse-360-degree-pointcloud/
@tbb It looks like you got a pointer to a package that can help you.
However going forward I’d like to request that you follow our guidelines and ask questions on http://answers.ros.org . ROS Discourse is for news and general interest discussions.