Loading the Weights and Biases into a New Model

Sometimes you might want to adjust, or "finetune" a model that you have already trained and saved.

However, loading saved Variables directly into a modified model can generate errors. Let's go over how to avoid these problems.

Naming Error

TensorFlow uses a string identifier for Tensors and Operations called name . If a name is not given, TensorFlow will create one automatically. TensorFlow will give the first node the name <Type> , and then give the name <Type>_<number> for the subsequent nodes. Let's see how this can affect loading a model with a different order of weights and bias :

import tensorflow as tf

# Remove the previous weights and bias
tf.reset_default_graph()

save_file = 'model.ckpt'

# Two Tensor Variables: weights and bias
weights = tf.Variable(tf.truncated_normal([2, 3]))
bias = tf.Variable(tf.truncated_normal([3]))

saver = tf.train.Saver()

# Print the name of Weights and Bias
print('Save Weights: {}'.format(weights.name))
print('Save Bias: {}'.format(bias.name))

with tf.Session() as sess:
    sess.run(tf.global_variables_initializer())
    saver.save(sess, save_file)

# Remove the previous weights and bias
tf.reset_default_graph()

# Two Variables: weights and bias
bias = tf.Variable(tf.truncated_normal([3]))
weights = tf.Variable(tf.truncated_normal([2, 3]))

saver = tf.train.Saver()

# Print the name of Weights and Bias
print('Load Weights: {}'.format(weights.name))
print('Load Bias: {}'.format(bias.name))

with tf.Session() as sess:
    # Load the weights and bias - ERROR
    saver.restore(sess, save_file)

The code above prints out the following:

Save Weights: Variable:0

Save Bias: Variable_1:0

Load Weights: Variable_1:0

Load Bias: Variable:0

…

InvalidArgumentError (see above for traceback): Assign requires shapes of both tensors to match.

…

You'll notice that the name properties for weights and bias are different than when you saved the model. This is why the code produces the "Assign requires shapes of both tensors to match" error. The code saver.restore(sess, save_file) is trying to load weight data into bias and bias data into weights .

Instead of letting TensorFlow set the name property, let's set it manually:

import tensorflow as tf

tf.reset_default_graph()

save_file = 'model.ckpt'

# Two Tensor Variables: weights and bias
weights = tf.Variable(tf.truncated_normal([2, 3]), name='weights_0')
bias = tf.Variable(tf.truncated_normal([3]), name='bias_0')

saver = tf.train.Saver()

# Print the name of Weights and Bias
print('Save Weights: {}'.format(weights.name))
print('Save Bias: {}'.format(bias.name))

with tf.Session() as sess:
    sess.run(tf.global_variables_initializer())
    saver.save(sess, save_file)

# Remove the previous weights and bias
tf.reset_default_graph()

# Two Variables: weights and bias
bias = tf.Variable(tf.truncated_normal([3]), name='bias_0')
weights = tf.Variable(tf.truncated_normal([2, 3]) ,name='weights_0')

saver = tf.train.Saver()

# Print the name of Weights and Bias
print('Load Weights: {}'.format(weights.name))
print('Load Bias: {}'.format(bias.name))

with tf.Session() as sess:
    # Load the weights and bias - No Error
    saver.restore(sess, save_file)

print('Loaded Weights and Bias successfully.')

Save Weights: weights_0:0

Save Bias: bias_0:0

Load Weights: weights_0:0

Load Bias: bias_0:0

Loaded Weights and Bias successfully.

That worked! The Tensor names match and the data loaded correctly.