Bezier Curve always the same length - html

Question

I'm working on a game in HTML5 canvas.
I want is draw an S-shaped cubic bezier curve between two points, but I'm looking for a way to calculate the coordinates of the control points so that the curve itself is always the same length no matter how close those points are, until it reaches the point where the curve becomes a straight line.

Answer 1

This is solvable numerically. I assume you have a cubic bezier with 4 control points.
at each step you have the first (P0) and last (P3) points, and you want to calculate P1 and P2 such that the total length is constant.
Adding this constraint removes one degree of freedom so we have 1 left (started with 4, determined the end points (-2) and the constant length is another -1). So you need to decide about that.
The bezier curve is a polynomial defined between 0 and 1, you need to integrate on the square root of the sum of elements (2d?). for a cubic bezier, this means a sqrt of a 6 degree polynomial, which wolfram doesn't know how to solve. But if you have all your other control points known (or known up to a dependency on some other constraint) you can have a save table of precalculated values for that constraint.

Answer 2

Is it really necessary that the curve is a bezier curve? Fitting two circular arcs whose total length is constant is much easier. And you will always get an S-shape.
Fitting of two circular arcs:
Let D be the euclidean distance between the endpoints. Let C be the constant length that we want. I got the following expression for b (drawn in the image):
b = sqrt(D*sin(C/4)/4 - (D^2)/16)
I haven't checked if it is correct so if someone gets something different, leave a comment.
EDIT: You should consider the negative solution too that I obtain when solving the equation and check which one is correct.
b = -sqrt(D*sin(C/4)/4 - (D^2)/16)

Answer 3

Here's a working example in SVG that's close to correct:
http://phrogz.net/svg/constant-length-bezier.xhtml
I experimentally determined that when the endpoints are on top of one another the handles should be
desiredLength × cos(30°)
away from the handles; and (of course) when the end points are at their greatest distance the handles should be on top of one another. Plotting all ideal points looks sort of like an ellipse:
The blue line is the actual ideal equation, while the red line above is an ellipse approximating the ideal. Using the equation for the ellipse (as my example above does) allows the line to get about 9% too long in the middle.
Here's the relevant JavaScript code:
// M is the MoveTo command in SVG (the first point on the path)
// C is the CurveTo command in SVG:
// C.x is the end point of the path
// C.x1 is the first control point
// C.x2 is the second control point
function makeFixedLengthSCurve(path,length){
var dx = C.x - M.x, dy = C.y - M.y;
var len = Math.sqrt(dx*dx+dy*dy);
var angle = Math.atan2(dy,dx);
if (len >= length){
C.x = M.x + 100 * Math.cos(angle);
C.y = M.y + 100 * Math.sin(angle);
C.x1 = M.x; C.y1 = M.y;
C.x2 = C.x; C.y2 = C.y;
}else{
// Ellipse of major axis length and minor axis length*cos(30°)
var a = length, b = length*Math.cos(30*Math.PI/180);
var handleDistance = Math.sqrt( b*b * ( 1 - len*len / (a*a) ) );
C.x1 = M.x + handleDistance * Math.sin(angle);
C.y1 = M.y - handleDistance * Math.cos(angle);
C.x2 = C.x - handleDistance * Math.sin(angle);
C.y2 = C.y + handleDistance * Math.cos(angle);
}
}