I would think that there must be something out there that somehow calculates, based off of closest joint,
how to cut the nearby geometry?
You can split by joint weighting, ofcourse it only makes sense if you actually bound the mesh first. And yes theres one script teht ive seen to do this.
ITs just not very handy in the end as youd still need to clean things up a wee bit anyway. Its not necceserily the best use fo resouces. Cant remeber the name tough. Its infinitely better to do just the isolation part yourself as you still end up doing a abit of manual work so oits better to isolat ethe step,