rigid bodies (like robot's) animation

Hello!!
I got a litle problem, maybe you can help me...
I have a toy model and in order to animate it i created a skelleton (quite simple, only 6 or 7 bones i think...) and linked each part of the model to the corresponding bone of the skelleton.

Now the fact of the matter is that I cant hide the bones if a want the animation to work... But I DONT want bones to render... Is there a way to do that?
If I hide the bones they won't be exported and animation won't work...

If not, can you tell me how would you do it to get this kind of rigid rig?

thx

Is the animation using skin modifier or physique or other animation system?

Animation dont depend if the bones are hidden or not, so you should hide them if you dont want them to be visible

If you still need to export hidden objects, just select the "Hidden Objects" option of the export dialog and they will be exported as regular, but wont be displayed or rendered in your application when you load them