Thank you. It seems that Arnold renders it even if toggled off. The mesh operator has no influence on what is rendered with this render engine, for some reason. 
Would I have to bake the skin animation to vertex animation? I don't know how. I've tried a vertex animation bake script from scriptspot, but it doesn't seem to work with skinned models
(Arnold renderer is standard with Max for 2018+ I believe)
Would I have to bake the skin animation to vertex animation? I don't know how. I've tried a vertex animation bake script from scriptspot, but it doesn't seem to work with skinned models
(Arnold renderer is standard with Max for 2018+ I believe)