Config System

We incorporate modular and inheritance design into our config system, which is convenient to conduct various experiments. If you wish to inspect the config file, you may run python tools/print_config.py /PATH/TO/CONFIG to see the complete config. You may also pass --options xxx.yyy=zzz to see updated config.

Config File Structure

There are 4 basic component types under config/_base_, dataset, model, schedule, default_runtime. Many methods could be easily constructed with one of each like Faster R-CNN, Mask R-CNN, Cascade R-CNN, RPN, SSD. The configs that are composed by components from _base_ are called primitive.

For all configs under the same folder, it is recommended to have only one primitive config. All other configs should inherit from the primitive config. In this way, the maximum of inheritance level is 3.

For easy understanding, we recommend contributors to inherit from exiting methods. For example, if some modification is made base on Faster R-CNN, user may first inherit the basic Faster R-CNN structure by specifying _base_ = ../faster_rcnn/faster_rcnn_r50_fpn_1x_coco.py, then modify the necessary fields in the config files.

If you are building an entirely new method that does not share the structure with any of the existing methods, you may create a folder xxx_rcnn under configs,

Please refer to mmcv for detailed documentation.

Config Name Style

We follow the below style to name config files. Contributors are advised to follow the same style.

{model}_[model setting]_{backbone}_{neck}_[norm setting]_[misc]_[gpu x batch_per_gpu]_{schedule}_{dataset}

{xxx} is required field and [yyy] is optional.

  • {model}: model type like faster_rcnn, mask_rcnn, etc.
  • [model setting]: specific setting for some model, like without_semantic for htc, moment for reppoints, etc.
  • {backbone}: backbone type like r50 (ResNet-50), x101 (ResNeXt-101).
  • {neck}: neck type like fpn, pafpn, nasfpn, c4.
  • [norm_setting]: bn (Batch Normalization) is used unless specified, other norm layer type could be gn (Group Normalization), syncbn (Synchronized Batch Normalization). gn-head/gn-neck indicates GN is applied in head/neck only, while gn-all means GN is applied in the entire model, e.g. backbone, neck, head.
  • [misc]: miscellaneous setting/plugins of model, e.g. dconv, gcb, attention, albu, mstrain.
  • [gpu x batch_per_gpu]: GPUs and samples per GPU, 8x2 is used by default.
  • {schedule}: training schedule, options are 1x, 2x, 20e, etc. 1x and 2x means 12 epochs and 24 epochs respectively. 20e is adopted in cascade models, which denotes 20 epochs. For 1x/2x, initial learning rate decays by a factor of 10 at the 8/16th and 11/22th epochs. For 20e, initial learning rate decays by a factor of 10 at the 16th and 19th epochs.
  • {dataset}: dataset like coco, cityscapes, voc_0712, wider_face.

FAQ

Ignore some fields in the base configs

Sometimes, you may set _delete_=True to ignore some of fields in base configs. You may refer to mmcv for simple inllustration.

In MMDetection, for example, to change the backbone of Mask R-CNN with the following config.

model = dict(
    type='MaskRCNN',
    pretrained='torchvision://resnet50',
    backbone=dict(
        type='ResNet',
        depth=50,
        num_stages=4,
        out_indices=(0, 1, 2, 3),
        frozen_stages=1,
        norm_cfg=dict(type='BN', requires_grad=True),
        norm_eval=True,
        style='pytorch'),
    neck=dict(...),
    rpn_head=dict(...),
    roi_head=dict(...))

ResNet and HRNet use different keywords to construct.

_base_ = '../mask_rcnn/mask_rcnn_r50_fpn_1x_coco.py'
model = dict(
    pretrained='open-mmlab://msra/hrnetv2_w32',
    backbone=dict(
        _delete_=True,
        type='HRNet',
        extra=dict(
            stage1=dict(
                num_modules=1,
                num_branches=1,
                block='BOTTLENECK',
                num_blocks=(4, ),
                num_channels=(64, )),
            stage2=dict(
                num_modules=1,
                num_branches=2,
                block='BASIC',
                num_blocks=(4, 4),
                num_channels=(32, 64)),
            stage3=dict(
                num_modules=4,
                num_branches=3,
                block='BASIC',
                num_blocks=(4, 4, 4),
                num_channels=(32, 64, 128)),
            stage4=dict(
                num_modules=3,
                num_branches=4,
                block='BASIC',
                num_blocks=(4, 4, 4, 4),
                num_channels=(32, 64, 128, 256)))),
    neck=dict(...))

The _delete_=True would replace all old keys in backbone field with new keys new keys.

Use intermediate variables in configs

Some intermediate variables are used in the configs files, like train_pipeline/test_pipeline in datasets. It’s worth noting that when modifying intermediate variables in the children configs, user need to pass the intermediate variables into corresponding fields again. For example, we would like to use multi scale strategy to train a Mask R-CNN. train_pipeline/test_pipeline are intermediate variable we would like modify.

_base_ = './mask_rcnn_r50_fpn_1x_coco.py'
img_norm_cfg = dict(
    mean=[123.675, 116.28, 103.53], std=[58.395, 57.12, 57.375], to_rgb=True)
train_pipeline = [
    dict(type='LoadImageFromFile'),
    dict(type='LoadAnnotations', with_bbox=True, with_mask=True),
    dict(
        type='Resize',
        img_scale=[(1333, 640), (1333, 672), (1333, 704), (1333, 736),
                   (1333, 768), (1333, 800)],
        multiscale_mode="value",
        keep_ratio=True),
    dict(type='RandomFlip', flip_ratio=0.5),
    dict(type='Normalize', **img_norm_cfg),
    dict(type='Pad', size_divisor=32),
    dict(type='DefaultFormatBundle'),
    dict(type='Collect', keys=['img', 'gt_bboxes', 'gt_labels', 'gt_masks']),
]
test_pipeline = [
    dict(type='LoadImageFromFile'),
    dict(
        type='MultiScaleFlipAug',
        img_scale=(1333, 800),
        flip=False,
        transforms=[
            dict(type='Resize', keep_ratio=True),
            dict(type='RandomFlip'),
            dict(type='Normalize', **img_norm_cfg),
            dict(type='Pad', size_divisor=32),
            dict(type='ImageToTensor', keys=['img']),
            dict(type='Collect', keys=['img']),
        ])
]
data = dict(
    train=dict(pipeline=train_pipeline),
    val=dict(pipeline=test_pipeline),
    test=dict(pipeline=test_pipeline))

We first define the new train_pipeline/test_pipeline and pass them into data.