Viking Helmet Tutorial

This is an overview of how I created the diamond grid for the viking helmet...this might work for furniture as well..or maybe not :P

• Copy the base helmet mesh into a new layer, select the points you want and Chamfer them until you like the size of the squares.
• Select the newly created squares, give them a new surface name and subdivide the polygons using Faceted method. This will give us the edges we need later on.
• Bevel the N-gons just a little bit and then collapse the polygons.
• Select all the center edges that form a cross and bevel the edges until they roughly match the size of the squares.
• Merge Points, change the distance setting until you delete all the extra polygons and then delete all the 2-point vertices.
• Select the triangles with the surface name you applied earlier on and merge them into quads.
• Select all the quads (4-point polygons) and copy into a new layer.

If you're not concerned with the heavy polygon count, you can subdivide the polygons (Faceted method) twice and skip the next section, use Heat Shrink and Thicken...and you're done :)

• Select the newly formed squares and apply the same surface name as above, this will come in handy later on.
• To use the Connect tool we'll need to use Thicken first. The Connect tool is a bit finicky. Instead of selecting each loop one by one and using Connect, there's a work around to use it in one go. 
• From the Statistics panel, select all the default surface polygons, switch to point or edge mode and use Thicken (make sure Create Side Surface is checked)
• Switch back to polygon mode and you'll see your old selection has grown to include the newly created polygons. 
• Now run Select loop..you'll need to do this or Connect won't work.
• Use Connect twice.
• Delete the side surfaces and then the back polygons.
• Subdivide your base helmet mesh one or twice so Heat Shrink works better.
•  Heat Shrink the diamond grid onto the helmet base and then Thicken to taste.

Hope that's helps :)