How to model this in a flexible and nondestructive way? I need to model this shape in a way that makes the general shape of the brackets easily editable, without having to extensive re-model and move many vertices each time I need to change the shape. I've tried tons of approaches using nearly every modifier and tool in blender's toolkit, but just cant seem to come to a workable solution. Desperately looking for an effective solution for this! Here are some of the shapes I need to be able to create with this setup (these renders were done using a displacement modifier and height maps that I generated in after effects, but would love to be able to maintain the entire workflow in Blender):
Make the bracket shapes, and set up an armature to deform them. Maybe just make one bracket and use a mirror modifier to copy it after it’s been deformed. Next, make a heavily subdivided plane, and put it where it would be if it was over the bracket’s location but they weren’t there. Use the shrink wrap modifier on the plane, and I think there is a setting where you can tell it to only deform along a certain axis, and make sure it stays outside of the target mesh.