Add repeating pattern to surface

Question

Am making a storm trooper helmet from Ep7 to be 3D printed, and need to add texture (physical not graphical) to part of the model as shown to black section of the reference image below.

And below is model in progress of the same section

My question is, is there a simple way to add the honeycomb type pattern over the outer surface of the model?

Thanks

Edit: @MrZak Shrinkwrap fail:

Edit: Second shringkwrap attempt more successful. Is there a quick way to trim off the excess?

Edit: Think I got it sorted. Thanks @MrZak

Answer 1

You can try the Tissue addon (https://github.com/alessandro-zomparelli/tissue)

Download and install the Addon.

Create a the base mesh (in this case the part of the helmet).

Then create the mesh you will be using as to create the mesh (for purposes of the tissue addon this will be your "COMPONENT" mesh.

Select the Component mesh, then Shift-Select the Base mesh.

Then on the Tissue Addon select "Tessellate"

A new mesh will be created (you can name it whatever you want).

Answer 2

Try using displacement. Displacement is when a texture is used to modify the geometry of an object. There are two ways I know of to displace geometry: Micro Displacements and the displacement modifier.

Micro Displacements (for cycles render):

1. On the render tab, in the properties bar, set the feature set to "experimental"
2. Add a subsurf modifier to your object. Change it from "Catmull-Clark" to "Simple" and check the adaptive checkbox.
3. In the properties panel, go to material and set the displacement to "true"
4. Get a honeycomb texture (make sure the texture is white where the edges of the hexagons are and black in the middle of the hexagons). UV unwrap the texture onto the mesh. You can also use the "generated" output of the texture coordinate node in the node editor and plug it into a mapping node to adjust the scale of the texture.
5. In the node editor for the material, plug the honeycomb texture into the "displacement" input in the material output. Change it from "color" to "non-color" data.
6. The displacement will show up in rendered view.
7. If you find the displacement too strong or not strong enough, multiply the image texture to modify the displacement. Numbers between 0 and 1 will make it weaker and numbers >1 will make is stronger. You can press TAB twice to refresh the displacement. Tweak the numbers until you are satisfied.

Displacement Modifier (3d Printable, but inefficient):

1. Add a subsurf modifier to your object. Change it from "Catmull-Clark" to "Simple". Crank up the resolution, you will need it to be pretty high.
2. Add a displacement modifier. Set the texture to a honeycomb texture (again, make sure the texture is white where the edges of the hexagons are and black in the middle of the hexagons).
3. Tweak the subsurf resolution and displacement strength and mid level until you are satisfied.
4. Apply the modifiers.