how to use the tool to annotate instance ID

[chrisyan]

Hi, thanks for your amazing work. I'm currently using your tool for annotation, but it seems the instance ID annotation feature isn't working. Could you please guide me on how to annotate instance IDs? Cheers, Chris

[jbehley]

Thanks for your interest in our work; and the labeler was gradually extended, therefore the labeling of instances is kind of suboptimal.

Anyways:

For annotating instances, one has to first define "instanceable" classes, i.e., in the labels.xml define for a class <instanceable>true</instanceable> (see, for example, the car class in the included labels.xml.

Then one has to label first the semantics, i.e., label the points belonging to the instanceable classes. ("Points" mode)

After that one can change to "instances" mode and then "add", "join", or "remove" instances. For adding an instance, one clicks "Create" and then one can span a polygon where the points inside will be added to an instance, which is then shown by an axis-aligned bounding box. With "Add" you can add points to a selected instance, "Split" creates also a new instance but will remove the points from the currently selected instance. "Del" will remove points from the selected instance.

With "Select", one can select an existing instance by left clicking inside the bounding box.

So the workflow is:

1. Label the semantics of the instanceable classes.
2. Select the class, for which you want to add instances.
3. Switch into "Instances" mode, and "Create" instances via selecting points that should belong to an instance.
4. Repeat 3, until you have all instances created.

Hope that helps.

[chrisyan]

Hi, thank you so much for your informative reply. I follow up your instruction. When I change to "instances" mode and try to create instance "car", but the button "add, join, remove" are not clickable as shown in the image. Could you give me more guidance? Thank you again.

[jbehley]

When you have finished the polygon, then right-click to finish it; which will then create the instance. The add, split, and del buttons are only available when you have selected an instance (via select)