Removing Skinned Mesh Renderer Disables animation?

Is there a way to disable the Skinned Mesh Renderer, but still being able to access its bone's animation?

I need to diable Skinned Mesh Renderer, so it doesnt use cpu.
But if I disable Skinned Mesh Renderer, the animation disables as well, when I debug each bone's localRotation I can see it's static, no animation whatsoever.
Yet if I re-activate the Skinned Mesh Renderer, I can retrieve each bone's animation once again, localRotation is animated.

What I have is two duplicated objects which contains certain bone hierarchy. One object will be the mesh, the other will have the animations (this way i can pass the animation to the mesh object, and modify afterwards)
The "animation object" will play the animation, while the "mesh object" will go bone per bone copying the position/rotation/scale each frame, it's the only way I can modify after the animation.
But I don't want the "animated object" to show in the render overlapping with the "mesh object", as I just need its animation info.

 

Old thread but I found it when searching for solution to similar scenario (overriding oculus avatar hand poses with my own animated hands)...

I solved this by setting the mesh reference on the skinned mesh renderer to 'none'. Animation still updates but nothing is drawn.

 

thanks so much!!!!