Animations are not playing.

When I play my game, my character is stuck in the T - pose (1st person character; only arms). No animation would play, not even the idle animation. The only time the animations would play and the animator controller works is if I do not “maximise on play” and view my character in the scene tab while the game is playing. If I build and run the game, the animations will not play. Is there a way to fix this? To add, the idle animation and entire mesh is off screen because it is a 1st person character.

I figured it was an animator controller and occlusion culling issue. The animator culling mode needs to be set to “always animate” because the rig is initially off screen, hence it being disabled until viewed by a camera.