Lightstorm3D is to release a set of deformation tools for Maya 2011/2012 Windows on 30 May 2011. The toolset will contain four separate tools, including a collision deformer and a texture deformer.
"The Collision Deformer allows you to collide objects with polygon geometry, using projected collisions (directional, concentrical and cylindrical). This method does not require a dynamics simulation."
"The Texture Deformer displaces shape components using Maya’s shading node networks. RGB channels of the texture output are mapped to XYZ displacement vectors."