Basic Controls

How geometry and source-processing controls shape every fill.

The six numeric controls use Illustrator document geometry wherever that interpretation applies. Their stored ranges are:

  • Thickness: 1–1000, default 4
  • Spacing: 4–1000, default 4
  • Angle: −90° to 90°, default 30°
  • Organic: 0–100, default 0
  • Brightness: −100% to 100%, default 0%
  • Contrast: 50–200%, default 100%

Drag a slider for continuous preview. The plug-in replaces the temporary preview while dragging and commits one undoable Vexy Linestra Change when you release. Click a numeric field to type an exact value. Press Up or Down to change it by 1, or Shift+Up/Down to change it by 10. Double-click a row's label icon to reset only that parameter to its default.

Hold Shift while dragging Thickness or Spacing to change both values by the same amount. This is useful when you want to preserve their visual relationship while making the result heavier, lighter, denser, or more open. Both controls respect their own minimum and maximum values.

For day-to-day work, the Thickness and Spacing controls initially use an upper limit of 100. Choose Settings… from the panel menu to set either upper limit between its minimum and 1000. These limits control the panel's slider and editor range; the effect continues to preserve values already stored in the document.

Thickness

Thickness is the maximum mark weight rather than a promise that every mark has that width. The source signal still modulates lines, dots, edges, and regions.

  • Linear, Wave, Circular, and Spiral use it as maximum strip width.
  • Halftone and Stipple use it for dot size.
  • Low-Poly, Hex, Contour, and Wireframe use it for edge or boundary weight.
  • ASCII maps it into glyph weight.
  • String Art scales the thread width.

If the result looks solid or muddy, reduce Thickness or increase Spacing.

Thickness Dynamics

The small menu button on the Thickness row controls how the sampled source signal becomes mark thickness:

  • Linear follows the source tone directly, from zero to the selected maximum Thickness.
  • Fast uses a smoother, more decisive response through the middle of the tonal range while still reaching zero and full thickness normally.
  • Threshold switches non-empty source areas between a thin 10% mark and full thickness.
  • 3 Steps quantizes non-empty source areas into three thickness levels.
  • 5 Steps uses five thickness levels for a finer stepped result.

Completely empty or transparent source areas remain empty in every mode. The 10% minimum applies only to Threshold and the stepped modes, and only where the source signal is greater than zero.

Spacing / Interval

Spacing is the main density and complexity control. It is called Interval in the Settings dialog. Depending on the fill, it means line interval, ring distance, grid size, triangulation density, seed distance, character size, or recursive scale.

Lower values usually preserve more detail but generate more paths. Higher values simplify the image and keep Illustrator more responsive.

A useful starting relationship for line modes is Spacing at roughly two times Thickness. Other modes may prefer a wider ratio.

Stroke Alignment

The small menu button on the Spacing row places generated strip geometry relative to its calculated centerline:

  • Center distributes the stroke equally on both sides.
  • Top places the stroke on one side of the centerline.
  • Bottom places it on the opposite side.

The apparent side follows the direction of each generated path, so Top and Bottom may face different visual directions on reversed or circular paths. This setting affects strip-based fills while preserving the same sampled thickness.

When Halftone is active, this button becomes the Dot Shape menu instead; see Halftone.

Angle

Angle rotates or biases modes with directional structure. It strongly affects Linear, Wave, Halftone, Dither, Wireframe, Fractal, and ASCII. It changes the starting orientation of Spiral.

Angle has little or no visible effect on Circular, Stipple, Contour, Low-Poly, and String Art because their geometry is radial, random, or derived directly from image structure.

Common values:

  • 0° for horizontal structure
  • 30° for the default diagonal
  • 45° for traditional hatch or halftone orientation
  • 90° for vertical structure
  • Negative values for the opposite diagonal

Organic

Organic adds deterministic imperfection. It does not replace the selected fill with random noise. Instead it can vary spacing, wobble centerlines, roughen strip edges, distort dots, jitter cells, perturb mesh segments, or move and rotate glyphs.

  • 0 keeps exact procedural geometry.
  • 10–25 adds subtle natural variation.
  • 30–60 creates an obviously handmade surface.
  • 60–100 is intentionally expressive and can obscure small detail.

Because the seed is stable, unchanged artwork and settings reproduce the same organic result.

Brightness

Brightness shifts the processed density after Levels and Contrast. Positive values brighten the source and therefore reduce generated mark density. Negative values darken it and increase density. The default value of 0 leaves the signal unchanged.

Contrast

Contrast uses the same symmetric tone curve as Playlines. Values above 100% separate light and dark source tones more strongly; values below 100% soften the source signal. It changes generated density without recoloring Dynamic Color output.

Source Levels

The two-handle gradient below Contrast remaps source luminance before Linestra generates geometry. Its round handles match the other sliders. The full-width track is black before the left handle, a black-to-white gradient between the handles, and white after the right handle. The left handle sets the black point and the right handle sets the white point. Together they define the source threshold range. Their read-only 0–255 values appear beside the gradient in the same style and color as the numeric fields; the default range is 10–245.

  • Move the black handle right to strengthen darker source detail.
  • Move the white handle left to clear lighter source areas sooner.
  • Narrow the range for a harder, higher-contrast signal.
  • Widen the range for gentler tonal variation.

Source Levels affects density in every fill. Dynamic Color still samples the source color itself. Dragging either handle previews continuously and commits one undoable change on release. Double-click the control to restore 10–245.

Scaling

When Illustrator scales a live Linestra effect with scalable effects enabled, Thickness and Spacing scale with the object. Angle, Organic, Contrast, Brightness, and Source Levels remain conceptually unchanged.

Entering Values

Numeric fields accept decimals and simple arithmetic expressions, including 10/3, 2+4, and (8+4)*2. Angle displays °; Contrast and Brightness display %; entering these suffixes is optional.

Thickness and Spacing additionally accept Illustrator measurement units. A bare number is interpreted as an Illustrator pixel, equivalent to one point in Illustrator's 72-ppi document coordinate system. You can enter values such as 20 mm, 2.5 cm, 1 in, 12 pt, or 24 px. Illustrator evaluates the expression and converts it to document geometry when the field is committed. Values outside the supported range are clamped safely.

For paint behavior, continue to Color & Appearance.