You mean like stomping a Goomba and then they go flat like a pancake ? I'd use Blendshapes, you can animate them programatically or just make an actual animation.
Yeah. But what if it's a more complex character with bones that is animated? Blendshapes wouldn't exactly work if the character can be in any position.
If you already have the bones to work with, then why not just scale the bones to create deformation ?
The way Maya scales bones is different than Unity, which causes issues. There are workarounds to this, but I was hoping there would be an easier method.
That is one way. Otherwise I guess you could turn that option off for your bones in Maya to get same result in Unity, but you probably already knew that. If you need that option I've read somewhere that using constraints in Maya it is possible to have it exporting properly to Unity though I haven't tried myself.