the new ent_animate function allows us to use animations from other models? so am wondering, does it make sense to have a model with alot of animations? say like 50 different animations?

am wondering because, now i mix animations with ANM_ADD to create the different weapon poses for my characters, this means i only need one of each animation...

i can run and ANM_ADD the 'hold large weapon' animation to it so i would only need one 'run' cycle

now if it was efficient to use really large animation files, i could instead create 5 different run animations, each with a different weapon pose, this would indeed make a larger file, is this practical or what?

your animation file should contain the basics, such as run, walk, crouch, fire. When you inherit from that, you can control in script, like lower half body of bones play run and upper plays fire etc. So no need to have 5 different run animations. One is enough and then you can mix it up with the rest.

I would create left strafe, right strafe, forward and backward for both run and walk. then I would have an idle animation and a fire animation, weapon switch animation etc. Then in script when running and switching weapon, lower body would play run and upper would play switch.

PS: the animation file doesn't need to have any mesh, just the bone structure with the animations.

yes i'm aware of this and is stated that i already do that, you can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q524cEQHOI

but i want to know if using a huge filesize with ALOT of animations will affect the speed of the engine...