OKEY I FOUND THE ISSUE!!!. when I change the culling type in the animated game_object to animate always, there is no problem.. But when I set it Based on Renders it goes haywire.. Probably because the pivot orbounding box of the object is out of fustrum, until it animates.. and when its culled the play_animation doesn't finish.
But unity changed something in 4.3 it used to be you als had the option culling based on bounding box,, which never gave this issue..
Is it possible there's something unity did, or something that needs updating in the play animation event to adapt to this change by the unity guyrs
Or is it possible to provide an alternative Play animation, that has a manual timing input, sort of a timed finished over-write, as a work around?? to sort of simulate the time it would take to animate, even when it's culled. (basically based on animation time)..
The get animation time action, should be able to do this, but it always seems to return zero
cheers
tomas
p.s here's the "old" unity ref page on bounding box animation culling:
http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/AnimationCullingType.BasedOnClipBounds.htmlbut it's disabled now..
also, same problem with generic rigs