Set bone transform in code after removing skinnned mesh renderer and adding mesh renderer.

I have a skeleton. it's is not animated outside of unity. Using an animation pack. I can change the bone rotation with code, but it only seems to work in LateUpdate.

What i am trying to do is when the skeleton is killed. His bones fall apart into a pile on the floor. But instead of using the last frame of it's animation, it flips to a T-Pose.

i have and can get each bone(mesh) in code. And even can get the actual HumanBodyBones in code. each bone(mesh) has on it a skinned mesh renderer, a rigidbody, mesh collider, mesh filter and a custom script to control it.

order of sequence at death of a skeleton: using a coroutine..

1. i stop the animation. Pause

2. then i save each bone position rotation localeulerangle in a separate dictionary.

3. i turn off SkinnedMeshRenderer(for each bone(mesh) in model).

4. i add MeshRenderer.

5. i add meshfilter and fill with appropriate mesh.

6. apply the values from the dictionaries to the bones.

7. turn on gravity(rigidbody).

I am expecting the skeleton to just collapse into a pile of bones, but it shoots to T-Pose and then collapses into a pile of bones. it's jarring to look at.

but no matter how i try to apply the rotation, transform, localeulerangles, ect., it will not hold on to the values of the last frame of the animation. i even tried to do it with without saving the values and reapplying. nothing seems to work.

TLDR;

Just trying to get a skeleton figure to fall into a pile of bones with the transforms and rotation applied to the bones so it had the last frame of animation before it's death.

any help would be appreciated. thanks.