Animate Excavator digging I want to animate an excavator and the path he makes in the ground while digging in an abstract way. Animating the excavator seems to be no problem but I have trouble with animating the ground cause the shovel is entering it in a radial way. 
I used the AnimAll add on to Animate the vertices of the ground to create the digging process but it is a very unsatisfying way.

I hope you have a better idea! 
Some pictures regarding my problem

Thank you in advance

Fabian
The Boolean Modifier will come in handy here. It's not a physically accurate solution, but you can certainly fake it for illustration purposes. 



Boolean can carve out geometry based on a reference object. So in this case, you can create a transparent object to point the modifier to, which will do the carving. Parent it to your solid object so they move in sync.

I've made a demo file with a basic animation. You can download it here.