Setting bone positions of a skinned mesh

[srcnalt]

Hi devs, I am having issues after updating r3f and threejs. Since I can no longer use __$[index] structure I am using nodes for accessing properties.
I am swapping skinned meshes with their bone positions adjusted. Such as beard meshes on a face, where beard bones adjusted to match certain vertex positions.

Now I use skinnedMesh object to construct my model instead of <primitive object={gltf.scene}> since meshes sometimes does not get disposed and old mesh stays in the scene.
However all the bones are cramped to the center of the scene, even though their positions seem to be correct when debugging the values.

This is what I am returning right now.

return <group>
   <skinnedMesh
      geometry={gltf.nodes.Beard.geometry}
      skeleton={gltf.nodes.Beard.skeleton}
      material={gltf.nodes.Beard.material}/>
</group>

and this is how I reposition the bones on a mesh

export function RepositionBone(index: number, bone: any, geometry: BufferGeometry) {
  if (geometry) {
    const positionAttribute: BufferAttribute = geometry.getAttribute('position') as BufferAttribute
    let vertex = new THREE.Vector3()
    vertex.fromBufferAttribute(positionAttribute, index)
    bone.position.set(vertex.x, vertex.y, vertex.z)
  }
}

[drcmda]

three broke __$ because index is now a race condition, they made it async, first thing that loads get 0, and so on. primitive will never dispose data because it's always external. but when you unmount the model cant possibly stay in the scene unless you have mutated something (calling add/removing imperatively etc). that this happens points to a real issue in your code.

i think you should consider gltfjsx which handles all that for you. here's an example of a skinned model that's being re-used https://codesandbox.io/s/gltf-animations-re-used-k8phr