I'm looking to recreate the indentation caused by stapling into a soft material. I'd like to accomplish this in a non-destructive way (with a deformer, rather than subdividing and editing the actual surface polygons themselves)
In the past I've subdivided the surface and edited the points manually, beveling the edges of the indentation around the staple. But it's not a quick process. And since there are usually 50+ staples on a sheet it's not efficient to do each one manually.
I'm open to any sort of suggestions. I'm willing to buy a plugin for this if I have to.
Here is an image showing what I'm looking to accomplish.