How to do weapon shadow for FPS/TPS Game

We are doing a combination FPS and TPS game. When in FPS mode, I have our third person model generating the shadow. I am putting the weapon on a socket of the FPS or TPS depending on which mode the player has selected. My shadow generating model (the TPS Model) doesn’t have the weapon while the FPS arms are holding it, so the weapon has no shadow. My approach was to create a clone or duplicate of the weapon without all the code that makes it a real weapon, just using the mesh. I couldn’t find where you can duplicate a mesh and attach it as a component, only how to duplicate the actor and thus have a fully functional additional weapon, so I need to find another approach (unless there is a duplication method I’m missing).

My thought was to generate a Shadow class for every weapon in the Weapon class and spawn those at the same time the weapon is spawned. The Shadow class would be identical to the Weapon class on minus all the functional aspects of the weapon, then it would attach to the socket of the TPS mesh while the player was in FPS mode. This seems like an awfully heavyweight and cumbersome approach to something that should be just a mesh duplication. What is the normal method in UE4 of having the shadow of the weapon appear in the hands of a shadow-generating third person model?

I’m going to answer this myself just to complete the question. Dislike all the questions you search up that have no answers.

On player pawn, I do have a simplistic Shadow class for each weapon, that I put in the hands of the shadow casting TPS mesh. It is unseen to the FPS player but the shadow is seen and looks appropriate. The shadow class is configured dynamically at the time the weapon is pieced together in case the weapon is using a different barrel (e.g., a base weapon may have a short barrel or sniper barrel and the shadow casting weapon has to match what the FPS weapon is configured as). This works fine.