Plug-ins for Adobe Illustrator

The theme of these plug-ins is creating complex paths in Adobe Illustrator.
There's a great gap in Illustrator (and other drawing programs) between simple primitives such as the rectangle and ellipse and the arbitrary complexity afforded by the pen and pencil tools.
The intent of these plug-ins is to provide tools to help bridge this gap.

These plug-ins are cross-platform and are transparency/style aware for AI-9 and greater

Kimbo

Kimbo adds 11 new tools in 2 tool groups to Illustrator's tool pallette. These tools permit the creation of artwork that would otherwise be difficult or time-consuming to create. The main tools are Mirror, Cut, Rectangle Cut, Tile, Rosette and Spike.

In addition, the following tools create new art : Rose, Wave, Rhombus, Archimedean spiral, Grid, Golden Rectangle, and Polar Mesh.

Learn more about Kimbo
See Kimbo Gallery See History file

Curvius

Curvius adds 5 new effects and filters to Illustrator.

They are Crenellate, Roughen Roulette, Straighten and Arrowhead.

Learn more about Curvius
See Curvius Gallery See History file

Tessella

There are awkward restrictions associated with Illustrator's patterns : not only are there printing issues but also you are pretty much limited to rectangular tiles. Tessella allows you to create not only rectangular patterns but also rhombic, hexagonal, triangular ones as well. Furthermore the edges of these tiles may be curved in arbitrary ways using Escher Edit mode and then any Illustrator artwork can be associated with the tool to create beautiful designs.

See a tutorial about Tessella See Tessella Examples
See Tessella Gallery See History file

Mesh Utils

Mesh Utils adds seven commands in the Object menu, one effect and one tool to create, colour, and otherwise manipulate gradient meshes. The Radial Mesh tool allows you to create a polar mesh from existing closed paths while the Stroke To Mesh effect turns the stroke of a path into a gradient mesh. The Apply to Gradient command colours a mesh with an Illustrator gradient, and the Colour from art filter colours a mesh according to the underlying art. Other filters are available to densify and split the mesh and also to create outlines and paths from the mesh.

VTexture

This plugin creates natural-looking textures as Live Effects from gradient-filled art. The textures are created as paths ( no pixels allowed! ). Play with the settings and the gradient to create an endless selection of beautiful effects. Some samples results are shown in the image to the left : some styles to get you started are included in the download.

Learn more about VTexture
See VTexture Gallery See History file

Point Tweaker

This plugin allows you to view and finely adjust the coordinates of path points. Path data is also shown.