I'm building a game using MD5 format which has a mesh and anim file associated with it. Essentialy, the mesh file has the base mesh coordinates and anim file(s) has the skeleton data.

My question is if their are several animations for the model (20) and ten or more models, is it better to load all the animation data at the start of the game (which will take up runtime memory), or to load from file (the anim data) when needed and then release the data when finished at some point to free up memory?

Thanks for comments/suggestions.

Pretty hard to say, I think. My usual attitude is that since there exists lots of cheap memory nowadays, it's often easier to load all the animations that might possibly be used in a level. Theoretically, lazy loading is better though... It's always: ease of development vs. performance vs. player wait time vs. playing nice with the rest of the system. Lots of trade-offs that aren't always easy to simply measure with a rule of thumb.

Jake, thanks for the response.
I guess experimenting on my Macbook is the place to start. Loading the most commonly used animations at game start, then loading others as needed on intermissions, might be the approach that finds the best compromise of playability and waiting time.

Let you know what the results are later down the road.