Animator disappears if not set to "Always Animate", Skinned mesh "update when offscreen" not helping

neilson

Hello, issue is as described above. After a playing for a tiny but and losing sight of the other player and then looking back, the other player becomes invisible. In editor if the GameObject is selected and "focused" with the F key the other player will reappear (very strange, like it is waking up the component or something). Setting the animator to "always animate" fixes the problem but I wish there was a better solution or some insight as to why the player is getting culled despite their skinned mesh bounding box updating and being within sight. Any thoughts?