Skin Rigging Issues, 3DS Max or Unity?

I give up, I have banging my head on this for days and am about to throw in the towel, begging for the communities help.
I have never worked in Unity for animating/Rigging. I am a 3DS Max modeler. I have modeled and skinned in 3DS Max a multi mesh (LOD) Spider. In 3DS MAx there's no issues with the skin.

Importing my model to Unity as FBX, with skin attached and Skeleton grouped. First there was the frustration of figuring out how to keep my model axis from one to the other. (solved)
The issue I have been desperately trying to work through is...

When rotating my bones, the mesh conforms great, weight seems fine, bends where it should. Moving any of the bones, moves the next one in the heirarchy as it should, rotates the previous one, but the mesh is no longer moving with it.
For this model I honestly don't need the bones to move, just rotate, the serious issue with it though is none of the animation rigging, IK chain, or two joint IK options make any difference. Setting up a rig and moving the target for instance does nothing. Moving the "tip" joint, previous bone follows, but the mesh stays in place.
I have been entirely unsuccessful in setting up rig constraints so I can just move the leg, and joints move accordingly.
- I can't animate or procedurally animate anything like this.

- Is this an issue with exporting from 3DS Max? I even tried selecting the imported asset, going to RIG tab and making sure it has the option for only two bones per vert in hopes that Unity can solve the issue. = Same problem.

Please save me! Top pic shows skeleton, rotated joints on left, moved joints on right.
Bottom image is just moving joints around. You can see that the bone angle moves accordingly, just mesh won't move.