how to draw smooth curve through N points using javascript HTML5 canvas?

Question

For a drawing application, I\'m saving the mouse movement coordinates to an array then drawing them with lineTo. The resulting line is not smooth. How can I produce a sing

Answer 1

A bit late, but for the record.

You can achieve smooth lines by using cardinal splines (aka canonical spline) to draw smooth curves that goes through the points.

I made this function for canvas - it's split into three function to increase versatility. The main wrapper function looks like this:

function drawCurve(ctx, ptsa, tension, isClosed, numOfSegments, showPoints) {

    showPoints  = showPoints ? showPoints : false;

    ctx.beginPath();

    drawLines(ctx, getCurvePoints(ptsa, tension, isClosed, numOfSegments));

    if (showPoints) {
        ctx.stroke();
        ctx.beginPath();
        for(var i=0;i

To draw a curve have an array with x, y points in the order: x1,y1, x2,y2, ...xn,yn.

Use it like this:

var myPoints = [10,10, 40,30, 100,10]; //minimum two points
var tension = 1;

drawCurve(ctx, myPoints); //default tension=0.5
drawCurve(ctx, myPoints, tension);

The function above calls two sub-functions, one to calculate the smoothed points. This returns an array with new points - this is the core function which calculates the smoothed points:

function getCurvePoints(pts, tension, isClosed, numOfSegments) {

    // use input value if provided, or use a default value   
    tension = (typeof tension != 'undefined') ? tension : 0.5;
    isClosed = isClosed ? isClosed : false;
    numOfSegments = numOfSegments ? numOfSegments : 16;

    var _pts = [], res = [],    // clone array
        x, y,           // our x,y coords
        t1x, t2x, t1y, t2y, // tension vectors
        c1, c2, c3, c4,     // cardinal points
        st, t, i;       // steps based on num. of segments

    // clone array so we don't change the original
    //
    _pts = pts.slice(0);

    // The algorithm require a previous and next point to the actual point array.
    // Check if we will draw closed or open curve.
    // If closed, copy end points to beginning and first points to end
    // If open, duplicate first points to befinning, end points to end
    if (isClosed) {
        _pts.unshift(pts[pts.length - 1]);
        _pts.unshift(pts[pts.length - 2]);
        _pts.unshift(pts[pts.length - 1]);
        _pts.unshift(pts[pts.length - 2]);
        _pts.push(pts[0]);
        _pts.push(pts[1]);
    }
    else {
        _pts.unshift(pts[1]);   //copy 1. point and insert at beginning
        _pts.unshift(pts[0]);
        _pts.push(pts[pts.length - 2]); //copy last point and append
        _pts.push(pts[pts.length - 1]);
    }

    // ok, lets start..

    // 1. loop goes through point array
    // 2. loop goes through each segment between the 2 pts + 1e point before and after
    for (i=2; i < (_pts.length - 4); i+=2) {
        for (t=0; t <= numOfSegments; t++) {

            // calc tension vectors
            t1x = (_pts[i+2] - _pts[i-2]) * tension;
            t2x = (_pts[i+4] - _pts[i]) * tension;

            t1y = (_pts[i+3] - _pts[i-1]) * tension;
            t2y = (_pts[i+5] - _pts[i+1]) * tension;

            // calc step
            st = t / numOfSegments;

            // calc cardinals
            c1 =   2 * Math.pow(st, 3)  - 3 * Math.pow(st, 2) + 1; 
            c2 = -(2 * Math.pow(st, 3)) + 3 * Math.pow(st, 2); 
            c3 =       Math.pow(st, 3)  - 2 * Math.pow(st, 2) + st; 
            c4 =       Math.pow(st, 3)  -     Math.pow(st, 2);

            // calc x and y cords with common control vectors
            x = c1 * _pts[i]    + c2 * _pts[i+2] + c3 * t1x + c4 * t2x;
            y = c1 * _pts[i+1]  + c2 * _pts[i+3] + c3 * t1y + c4 * t2y;

            //store points in array
            res.push(x);
            res.push(y);

        }
    }

    return res;
}

And to actually draw the points as a smoothed curve (or any other segmented lines as long as you have an x,y array):

function drawLines(ctx, pts) {
    ctx.moveTo(pts[0], pts[1]);
    for(i=2;i

var ctx = document.getElementById("c").getContext("2d");


function drawCurve(ctx, ptsa, tension, isClosed, numOfSegments, showPoints) {

  ctx.beginPath();

  drawLines(ctx, getCurvePoints(ptsa, tension, isClosed, numOfSegments));
  
  if (showPoints) {
    ctx.beginPath();
    for(var i=0;i

canvas { border: 1px solid red; }

This results in this:

You can easily extend the canvas so you can call it like this instead:

ctx.drawCurve(myPoints);

Add the following to the javascript:

if (CanvasRenderingContext2D != 'undefined') {
    CanvasRenderingContext2D.prototype.drawCurve = 
        function(pts, tension, isClosed, numOfSegments, showPoints) {
       drawCurve(this, pts, tension, isClosed, numOfSegments, showPoints)}
}

You can find a more optimized version of this on NPM (npm i cardinal-spline-js) or on GitLab.