Ok; I've looked around a little bit and could not dig up enough to fully answer my questions...

First of all, I'm generating a hack and slash adventure. However, we want hordes of monsters on screen at once.

But, I do want, at least for the main characters, animation combination; So the main characters (4 players playing at once). Are most likely going to need bone animations so they can run and swing swords/fist at the same time.

Now. The actual questions...

For multiple meshes on screen at once, is it better to use vertex animation or bone animation? I'm assuming the textures will all be shared on the video card, however, in bone animation is there extra data created on the video card PER INDIVIDUAL ENTITY? Same with vertex? (I assume vertex animation has all animations already blocked out by keyframe into video ram... but does it do it per entity or per mdl?). So, say I have 15 monsters on screen, will that be less video memory if it's vertex or bone animation? (assuming they are all using animations at different times...).

Bone data would be imported using .fbx files from Maya... (which is better, fbx or .x files in terms of exporting?)...

I was initially under the impression that bone animation used less video ram.. however, the manual said otherwise so I'm unsure of the actual uses for bone animations now other than combining animations to create new ones (run forward shoot to the side... something like that). Or using bone animation in physics simulations (rag dolls?). So... what are the real advantages to using bones?

Does anyone know of a good structure to put animations into? What should an animation manager (in code) contain in order to keep track of states? Any tips in this area would be appreciated (we're developing the game in c++ using acknex.dll, and commercial version, I'm the sole programmer).

Thanks for your time!