Unity Game Optimization - Third Edition

Considering baked animations

Using baked animations will require changes in the asset by using the 3D rigging and animation tool that we are using, since Unity does not provide such tools itself. Animations are normally stored as keyframe information, which it uses to keep track of specific mesh positions and interpolate between them at runtime using skinning data (bone shapes, assignments, animation curves, and so on). Baking animations means effectively sampling and hardcoding each position of each vertex into the mesh/animation file per frame without the need for interpolation and skinning data.

Using baked animations can sometimes result in much smaller file sizes and memory overhead than blended/skinned animations for some objects since ...