[socalgal2]

> compared to old-school bone animation where you send the info to the vertex shader every frame?

If I understand correctly this really isn't a thing anymore. Instead most modern engines copy the original vertices to a temp or skinned vertex buffer with a compute shader and then use normal non-skinned rendering techniques to display them. This means you don't need 2 copies of every shader, one with skinning and one without so less combinations.

That doesn't change the other answers to your question.