Thoughts on attaching actors to skeletal mesh bones at runtime?

Hey all,

A while back I posted about a mechanic that I’ve been working on that gives the player the ability to wrap and unwrap a rope around objects in the game world.
https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?80760-quot-Ribbon-quot-that-the-player-can-wrap-around-the-game-world

Now that I have some time not working on school projects, I’m hoping to allow the player to wrap the rope around characters’ limbs, and have the points of the rope move with character animations.

I am currently attaching the rope points to the actor’s root components, so they do not move with a character’s animation. When I check for point instantiation via raycasting, I am wondering how I might:

  1. Find the bone that controls the nearest vertices on the skeletal mesh
  2. Attach the rope point (an actor) to that specific bone.
  3. OR use an alternate solution to allow the rope to wrap around character limbs.

This is a shot in the dark, but if anyone has any links to documentation on this (I have only found documentation on attaching to sockets, and only in the skeletal mesh editor) or has done something similar, please let me know! Thanks!