Is it possible to make vertices defined by a mesh and mesh filters animating?

By setting up bones in SkinnedMeshRenderer and setting up boneWeights, bindPoses values in sharedMesh of SkinnedMeshRender you can make vertices animating. Is it possible to make vertices animating by setting boneWeights and bindPoses in a MeshFilter? Or is a SkinnedMeshRenderer always a requirement for binding vertices to bones and so you can animate vertices?

My goal is to have an animating game object in which I can hide/show some parts (group of vertices) by a script (e.g. defined by MeshFilter) .