Basically yes, altering the mesh itself using Blueprints…think about kind of adding a modifier ( smooth, taper, turbolence modified in 3d studio max ) on the shape.
Here is a brief explanation ( this is just an example of many ) of what the system in Softimage does…in short it takes the point position of a mesh and the point position of an animated mesh, then it create a weightmap based on the average distance between the points of the two meshes.
Tension map using ICE
In short the most important thing is not doing exatcly whats in the linked video, but be to access the point position of a mesh in order to use them for different purposes, since using Blueprints you can access and create logic based on different scenarios ( animation and so on )