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Memory maps & connecting

What your drawing remembers - and how it turns single strokes into webs. The heart of Nekudot.

What a memory map is

A memory map is simply what your drawing remembers - every spot you've drawn, kept as a scatter of points. It has no pixels of its own; it just remembers where your strokes have been. As you draw, each new point joins the map, and that growing record is the map's trail.

Maps are shared across every layer, so the same memory feeds your whole drawing. You can keep several maps and switch between them in the Maps panel (m). Each map row has a Flash button that briefly lights up that map's points on the canvas - glowing dots that pulse, then fade.

Check the memory Not sure why the web is reaching somewhere? Hit Flash (m → the map row) to see exactly which points your drawing remembers. Seed strokes show, and so do marks you rubbed out with the eraser's Paint only mode - a great way to understand where your next connections will land.

How connecting works

When a connecting brush lays down a point, it reaches out to nearby remembered points and draws a faint line to some of them - how near it looks is Reach, how many it connects is Density. One line is barely there; hundreds of them overlapping build the soft, sketchy texture. Because the memory sticks around, a new stroke reaches back toward everywhere you drew before.

This is the idea behind Harmony: the magic isn't the line under the cursor, it's the swarm of faint connections between remembered points.

The connecting settings

Two groups of controls shape the web, each with its own presets. Web routing - which map a stroke reads from and writes to - lives in the Maps panel; the art-style dials (how the lines look) live in the brush's Connecting settings.

Web routing where

These controls live in the Maps panel. Connection lines land on the active layer, alongside your strokes, and read from and trail into the active map. Whether to connect at all is the Connect to setting below (Nothing turns it off).

Connect to: Both map and stroke - connect to old points and this stroke. Stroke - only this stroke's own points. Map - only points that existed before this stroke. Nothing - don't connect at all.

Connection art style how

Pick a preset, then nudge the few core dials; the rest live under More.

The core dials:

Weight: How bold the mark is - each connection is drawn as this many thin 1px hairs. More hairs = heavier, but never one fat line. 1 = a single delicate line.
Spread: How wide (px) the hairs fan out. Narrow + high Weight = a dense bold mark; wide = an airy band.
Opacity: Per-line opacity. Low values let many lines build into soft shading; high looks like ink.
Density: Chance each eligible neighbour gets a line. Higher = denser (and heavier).
Reach: How far to look for neighbours to connect - larger spans bigger gaps.
Links: Connect each point to only its nearest few neighbours instead of every one in Reach. 0 = all (the usual web); a small number (3-5) trims the long crossing lines into a clean, even mesh - and makes the Gradient / Rainbow colours read clearly.

Under More:

Fade: Fade each line with its length: 0 = even; 1 = long lines vanish. High Fade gives the Shaded style its distance-shaded tone.
Scatter: Jitter the hairs' ends: 0 = a neat parallel band, 1 = loose crossing hairs (hand-drawn).
Speed: Link weight to stroke speed: slow, deliberate passes build richer; fast flicks stay light. 0 = off.
Min length: Skip connections shorter than this, avoiding clumps near each point.
Inset: Trim both ends of every line so it floats between points - the airy web look.
Line shape: Straight, a bulging arc, or a smooth curve.
Dash: Solid, dashed or dotted.
Color: Primary or Secondary toolbar colour; Gradient (Primary→Secondary); Complement (Primary ↔ its opposite hue); Rainbow; or a curated palette (Sunset, Ocean, Neon, Fire). Everything past Secondary colours each line by its angle, so the web fans into bands of colour.

Presets: Classic (faint, inset, sketchy) and Web (sparser, stronger).

Try this Trace a shape with the Seed brush first (it only feeds the memory, no ink), then draw over it with Web - watch the web pull toward your hidden guide. For a soft Harmony look reach for low opacity + a little inset; for crisp ink use high opacity + zero inset. Start from a preset, then nudge one dial at a time.