How to transform a plane into a honeycomb?

Question

I would like to make all the convex plane shown by the red arrow as a honeycomb surface.

I tried to use the add-on Honeycomb after having the addon Extra Objects enabled ( File > User Preferences > Addons, in the Add Mesh category).

In the Add Object menu > Mesh > Extra Objects > MiscObjects > add a Honeycomb. But i don't know how I can stick it on the surface I want to transform.

Or maybe there is another method?

Answer 1

The best result (in my experience anyway) is achieved with the Tissue addon's tesselate function. The mesh isn't perfect and you need to remove doubles, but it's still much nicer and easier to use than a shrinkwrap based workflow.

What you need is a basic mesh tile that will repeat nicely, like this one:

And hopefully a fairly evenly spaced and uniform mesh, comprised of pretty much equally sized quad faces (you can generate such a mesh with the Remesh modifier).

I would suggest separating the piece you want to convert into a hex grid from the rest of the mesh, tesselate, remove doubles, then re-join with the original.

To generate the tesselation:

1. Select your hex tile.
2. Then select your target object (the one you want to generate a hex grid from).
3. Go to the Tissue tab in the tools panel.
4. Click on the "Tesselate" button.

Answer 2

You could use a procedural texture to render the surface as a honeycomb such as described in this answer : https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/78003/29586

This can be achieved by importing the material (using File/Append) from the Blend file provided in the above answer and assigning it to your surface. Use a Mapping node to adjust the orientation if necessary.