Welcome to my small Chisel & Bits tutorial
While working on our Continuum node 2 spawn I noticed that not many players or staff know much about this awesome mod. Therefore, I decided to tell you a little bit about it. It is not meant to be an in-depth guide to show you how to create a masterpiece in five steps. This is just to encourage and give you a little nudge in the right direction.
Warning: read at your own risk. If you give this mod a chance then it will consume hours of your time on simple projects!
Table of Content:
Keybinds
Items needed to get started
The different options
Getting started
Examples of finished work
How to create a masterpiece in 5 simple steps
Additional information1. Keybinds
To get started open your key binds and look for Chisel & Bits keybinds. You will find the “undo” and “redo” options helpful for faster building. If you want you can keybind all of the options.
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2. Items needed to get started
Now that you have your keybinds all set and ready to go you also need to make yourself a few items to help you achieve your goals. I am only listing the things that are necessary for you to have in order to get started.
The most important of them all is the Chisel; make sure it is from Chisel & Bits mod. The best one is the Diamond Chisel but they all work the same, just have different durability. The chisel is used to break the chiselled blocks. You can still add bits even without having it in your inventory but you cannot use the undo option or break any individual bits.
The other mandatory item is the Bit Bag. You cannot do much without it. The Bit Bag will contain all the bits that you have broken. If you do not have it then even just one block broken down in bits will fill your inventory twice over! You could use more than one bag at a time as well.
If you plan to use any liquids in your builds then you will also need the Bit Tank. You put a bucket of any liquid in it and then can pull it out in bits. It is very easy and simple to use in my opinion.
An additional note about fluid bits: all liquids work as if they are water. That includes the cooling effect in some mod packs such as Forever Stranded. You could use lava and it would not burn you if you step into it.
I cannot forget about the actual blocks you will be using. If you want to use a few oak log bits then you will need to turn an oak log block into bits first. If you want to use a lapis block then you will need to do the same. Want to add some fire or half-slabs? Sorry, those are not possible. How about a chiselled stone? Yes, you can use this. Although not all blocks can be broken down for Chisel and Bits you can still use almost all of the full blocks.
Oh, I almost forgot to add this. If you are playing in Creative mode then you do not need any of these items. Should I have mentioned it a bit higher up? Hmm, let me think about it for a second… Nah.
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3. The different options
Action options
I think undo and redo are both quite intuitive and do exactly what they say. Just make sure to have enough Chisel durability with undo.
Place or replace? The first one is for placing bits while the latter is for overwriting an already existing pixel and adding more depending on its shape.
Shapes
You can swap to different shape option with keybinds. That was you can easily replace the whole material in just one click or add some intricate details one pixel at a time.
Chisel Designs
Positive – Clones your chisel design by making an exact copy. Make sure you have all the needed blocks with you.
Negative – This is opposite of the positive design. Think of it as being a cast for a sculpture. It allows you to transfer shapes between materials.
Mirror – You can now reverse the bits along a specific axis.
Positive Chisel Design modes
Replace – Remove the block you are looking at and place down the design in there.
Additive – Only add bits where they will fit.
Impose – Add bits where they fit and replace them if needed but do not remove any extra bits.
Placement – Place the design on the block you are looking at.
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4. Getting started
You have your Chisel, and a Bit Bag, and you are ready to start. Now what?If your plan is to wait for inspiration then try again. That is not something you will need because after spending half an hour doing some creative work you will get into the right mood for it. Try out some fun shapes; maybe create a tiny pixel version of your base even! Relax and have fun.
You need to figure out what you want to build. If you can find some reference photos for examples then that is great. All artists sometimes need to look at a picture to make sure that they are getting things right. The need for that diminishes as you gain experience.
Oh, you picked a MyM sign and found a reference photo? That is great. Now we need to make a basic shape for it. I recommend you to look around near the area you are building and make sure it is not too small or too big. You can always come back to this step if needed. In this case, I started with already existing old MyM sign and my goal was to make it look a lot more similar to the logo.
When I build, I do not look at colours at first, instead I make them contrast so I can change them later with just a few clicks. See if it works with you or not, maybe you always want to use the final coloured blocks instead. The logo did not have symmetrical letters so I made sure that these were not either. Although symmetry is nice, avoid using it everywhere.
Here are a few steps I recreated because I did not make any photos of my work in progress earlier. As you can see, I began with removing bigger areas to define the actual letters better. Every now and again, I went further away and looked at the sign from distance, then corrected anything I found lacking.
Open this album as a link.I added a highlight around the letters and it really brought them to life. I then copied the designs from this side to the other side as well with Positive Chisel Design (or a middle-click when in Creative). To clear a chisel design of any already existing designs you just need to put it in a crafting grid on its own.
In the end, my project turned out quite similar to the logo and I was happy with it. Now it is time for you to go and make something with Chisel & Bits. You know about the basics now and only need some practice. Okay, maybe a lot of practice.
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5. Examples of finished work
Here are a few examples of Chisel and Bits work done at the spawn of Continuum node 2. I think they added a few nice finishing touches and make the area look a lot more detailed even though I only added a few things. Sometimes less is more.
If you have some nice Chisel & Bits work then share pictures of them in the comments.
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6. How to create a masterpiece in 5 simple steps
I lied, there is a guide on how to create a masterpiece in 5 steps.
Step one: Make a basic shape
Step two: Pick your colour palette
Step three: Construct additional pylons
Step four: ???
Step five: Profit
I mean really... What else did you expect?
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7. Additional information
Here are a few links you might find useful.
Chisel & Bits mod page on Curse.
Some mods that work well with Chisel & Bits. For example Chisel adds a lot more variety of blocks. You get almost a dozen different variations of different blocks! Then there is also the Flat Coloured Blocks. Want a solid coloured block? Transparent block? Glowing block? This mod adds all of those in almost any colour and shade possible.
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Did I miss anything? Let me know down in the comments. Make sure to share some of your Chisel & Bit work as well.
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