Make a mesh/plane deform on collision (and stay deformed) I want to create a animation like those "spacetime deformation" ones, but I am stuck on creating "spacetime".  (a mesh/plane).

I created a plane, gave it a soft body, collisions, and a passive rigidbody.  

A cube with a rigidbody and collisions will land and deform the mesh, but it snaps right back.

How can I make it so the cube lands, and then leaves the plane deformed, and the cube just sits there?

I googled around and searched this site, nothing comes up.

An image of what I want (after it settles):



The ball depressed the mesh, creating an indentation.
As suggested by timaroberts shapekeys could be a way to achieve this.

Shape keys a are a way to store or save a geometry state of you mesh, allowing to animate by morphing or blending between them freely.


Add a new plane object
Subdivide it as much as you need
Exit edit mode and go to the Properties Window > Object Data > Shape Keys
Add two shapekeys (base and one to make your deformation)
Select the second key
Enter edit mode
Turn on proportional edit with O key (letter "o" not zero) 
Grab the central faces or vertex and move them down in Z axis
Use Mouse Wheel Scroll to adjust proportional editing size accordingly
Exit edit mode and you can blend freely between shapes.