Questions about memory usage for models

Performance & Profiling Runtime Performance
1

Lets say I have a model with maybe 1000 verts. In my 3D package (Cheetah 3D) I have multiple animations (Cheetah calls them takes), the animations are created by manipulating bones at various keyframes.

Now my question is, when I save my model as FBX, how can I tell how much memory it uses?

When an animation is saved, does it simply save the verts that change each frame (this would take massive memory, if you had 1000 verts and all 1000 verts changed over 10 frames, those 1000 verts become 10,000!), or does it save the bones themselves, and the vertex weight map values? That would take a whole lot less ram!

Can someone please help me with a clear example of calculating approximate memory used for a model that has bones, a weight map, and XXXX number of animation frames?

Thanks!

2

animation is stored through bones and their positions.
the vertex positions are then in realtime interpolated from the up to 4 weighted bones affecting a vertex

3

Thanks Dream. So all it really takes up is:

  1. Memory for the bones (pos,rot,scale for each bone)
  2. Memory for the vertex weights. Basically each vertex in the mesh will gain 4 bone ID variables, and 4 weights?

Sorry for all the questions, I really want to make sure I understand how much memory skeletal animation takes up.

By the way, if you are NOT using bones, then I assume each frame will contain updated position for each vertex that changed? In other words, animating without bones takes up more memory than with?

Thanks in advance!