Tao Train Depth Anything V2

Depth Net Mono

Standalone install? If this session was not initialized by the TAO skill bank plugin, run the tao-setup skill first (host preflight, credentials, cross-skill discovery).

Monocular depth estimation using Metric Depth Anything v2 or Relative Depth Anything architectures. Predicts per-pixel depth from single RGB images.

Pretrained checkpoint loading varies by model variant and use case — see the Pretrained checkpoint loading — use case matrix in references/parameters.md.

The mono and stereo skills both invoke the unified TAO depth_net CLI inside the container; the mono/stereo family is selected via model.model_type (see references/parameters.md).

For TAO Deploy TensorRT actions (gen_trt_engine, TensorRT evaluate, and TensorRT inference), read references/tao-deploy-depth-anything-v2.md first. The deploy spec template lives in this skill's references/spec_template_deploy.yaml.

PyT actions packaged by this model skill: train, evaluate, inference, export, and quantize. The PyT depth_net entrypoint does not accept a PyT-side gen_trt_engine action in the current TAO image. The gen_trt_engine action metadata must run with the TAO Deploy container, and the deploy workflow remains the deploy-specific entrypoint.

Train Action Policy

This model is AutoML-enabled at the model layer. Before handling any train-stage request, read references/skill_info.yaml and resolve the run override from either an explicit automl_policy value or the user's workflow request. Use automl_policy: on by default and only expose on / off in new launch prompts. Treat phrases like "turn off AutoML", "disable AutoML", "no HPO", or "plain training" as automl_policy: off for this run only. When automl_policy: on, automl_enabled: true, and both schemas/train.schema.json and references/spec_template_train.yaml are packaged, route the train action through tao-skill-bank:tao-run-automl by default with this model's skill_dir. Preserve workflow/application overrides for datasets, specs, output directories, GPU/platform settings, parent checkpoints, and automl_policy. Use direct model training only when automl_policy: off or the packaged train schema/template is missing; in the missing-schema case, report that AutoML is enabled but not runnable for this model until schemas are generated.

Non-train actions such as evaluate, inference, export, and deploy flows stay in this model skill. The per-run automl_policy override does not change model metadata.

Workflow

Prerequisites — data accessibility

Your dataset (RGB images + GT depth files) must be reachable from inside the container:

• SDK runner: place files at the S3 paths the runner resolves (the S3_TRAIN / S3_EVAL placeholders shown in Typical Spec Overrides). The runner handles S3 → container-path mounting transparently.
• Direct docker run (e.g. local testing): mount the host dataset root read-only at the same in-container path:

docker run ... -v <host_data_root>:<host_data_root>:ro <container> ...

The same accessibility requirement applies to the <output_dir> written by all actions.

Step 1 — Annotation file

Per-line annotation file referenced by data_sources[*].data_file:

Do not pass stereo annotation rows such as <left_image> <right_image> <gt_depth> directly to mono train/evaluate/inference. If only a stereo depth dataset is available, derive a mono annotation file by keeping the left image and GT depth columns, then mount or stage the image/depth archive at the same container paths referenced by that derived annotation file.

If you already have one, point to it. Otherwise generate via depth_net convert:

depth_net convert -e <convert_spec.yaml>

convert_spec.yaml template:

results_dir: <directory where generated annotation files are written>
data_root: <directory whose immediate children are scene/sample folders that contain your image+depth files; convert walks data_root recursively but expects per-scene subdirectories at one level below>
image_dir_pattern: [<substring matching left/RGB image paths>]
depth_dir_pattern: [<substring matching GT depth paths>]
image_extension: ''     # optional .endswith filter, e.g. '.jpg'
depth_extension: ''     # optional, swapped during depth derivation, e.g. '.png'
split_ratio: 0.0        # 0.0/1.0 = test-only; 0.8 = 80/20 train+val

convert walks data_root recursively, selects paths whose path-string contains all substrings in image_dir_pattern (AND-filter), then derives the depth path by replacing image_dir_pattern[0] with depth_dir_pattern[0] and image_extension with depth_extension. Inspect your dataset's directory layout and identify the substring distinguishing RGB images from depth files (e.g. rgb_ vs sync_depth_).

data_root must point at the parent that contains the per-scene subdirectories (e.g. for NYU eval, use /data/nyu_v2/eval/test, not /data/nyu_v2/eval/test/bathroom — the latter limits the walk to a single scene). Always include the leading dot in image_extension / depth_extension (e.g. '.jpg' not 'jpg'); the substring swap is form-sensitive and a mismatch silently corrupts derived paths.

Step 2 — Pair model_type and dataset_name based on your data

Default — generic class for each task:

Dataset-specific class — switch when the data needs preprocessing the generic class does not perform:

Using a generic class on data that requires unit conversion (e.g. raw NYU uint16 PNGs) results in an empty valid mask and silent train_loss = NaN. Match the class to your data's encoding.

For relative mono data (RelativeMonoDataset or NYUDV2Relative), leave dataset.min_depth and dataset.max_depth unset or set both to null. Non-null metric depth ranges are passed into the relative dataset constructor and fail with BaseRelativeMonoDataset.__init__() got an unexpected keyword argument 'min_depth'.

Step 3 — Write spec yaml from Typical Spec Overrides

Copy the action block from Typical Spec Overrides (references/spec-overrides.md). Replace:

• model.model_type from Step 2
• dataset.<...>.data_sources[*].dataset_name from Step 2
• data_sources[*].data_file with the path from Step 1 (S3 path under SDK runner, host path for direct docker)
• For metric finetune: additionally apply the Metric Variant Finetuning Recipe in references/finetuning-recipes.md.

For mono training set train.precision: fp32 (recommended) or bf16 (Ampere SM80+, alternative).

Step 4 — Run

Create writable home/cache directories inside the mounted output path before using --user. Some TAO containers do not have an /etc/passwd entry for the host UID, and PyTorch / matplotlib need writable cache paths when running as that UID.

mkdir -p <output_dir>/home \
         <output_dir>/.cache/matplotlib \
         <output_dir>/.cache/torchinductor \
         <output_dir>/.cache/xdg

docker run --gpus 'device=0' --shm-size 16G --shm-size=8g \
  --user "$(id -u):$(id -g)" \
  -e USER="$(id -un)" \
  -e LOGNAME="$(id -un)" \
  -e HOME=<output_dir>/home \
  -e MPLCONFIGDIR=<output_dir>/.cache/matplotlib \
  -e TORCHINDUCTOR_CACHE_DIR=<output_dir>/.cache/torchinductor \
  -e XDG_CACHE_HOME=<output_dir>/.cache/xdg \
  -v <data_root>:<data_root>:ro \
  -v <output_dir>:<output_dir> \
  <container> \
  depth_net <action> -e <spec.yaml>

Without --user "$(id -u):$(id -g)" the container writes outputs as nobody:nogroup, blocking host-side cleanup and retry.

Step 5 — Verify

• Container exit code 0
• status.json kpi block populated
• For train: inspect per-step train_loss directly — the entrypoint reports Execution status: PASS even when train_loss = NaN (see the Metric Variant Finetuning Recipe → Sanity-run PASS criteria in references/finetuning-recipes.md)
• For evaluate / inference: artifacts under results_dir

For TAO Deploy TensorRT actions (gen_trt_engine, TensorRT evaluate, and TensorRT inference), read references/tao-deploy-depth-anything-v2.md first. Deploy spec templates live in this skill's references/ folder with the spec_template_deploy_*.yaml prefix.