# Bezier curve arc length

How can I find the distance traveled by a Bezier curve?

For example, the distance traveled by a Linear Bezier Curve is:

distance = sqrt(pow(x[1] - x[0], 2) + pow(y[1] - y[0], 2));


I want to estimate a sampling resolution beforehand, so I don't have to waste time checking if the next point is touching the previous point.

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You should reword the question to refer to the length of the curve, that is a much more straightforward (and searchable) term. –  Sparr Nov 28 '10 at 11:34
i suggest posting this on math, i'm sure some clever face over there will give you the answer in one of them clever web fonts :p –  Tor Valamo Nov 28 '10 at 17:27
@Tor I did (yesterday), but I've been told it's very complicated, and hence unpractical. [ math.stackexchange.com/q/12186/2736 ] –  Sicarius Noctis Nov 28 '10 at 21:08
Supposedly clothoid curves/splines are an alternative to beziers, and have closed-form arclength expressions, but I don't know much about this yet. (Trying to generate equal-distance points along a curve.) Catenaries also have closed-form arc length expressions? –  endolith Feb 21 '14 at 16:43

A simple way for cubic Beziers is to split the curve into N segments and sum the segments' lengths.

However, as soon as you need the length of only part of the curve (e.g. up to a point 30% of the length along), arc-length parameterization will come into play. I posted a fairly long answer on one of my own questions about Béziers, with simple sample code.

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I'm doing this for the LEGO Mindstorms NXT, which has a really weak processor (48Mhz), so I need as much speed as possible. I'll take the dividing approach to conserve some speed, and get it accurate enough (for "non-realtime" rendering). I also have a option in which you can set the value of 1.0/t (called resolution), so that's for "realtime" (which is at best 10fps on the slow NXT). Every iteration, t += resolution, and a new point/line is drawn. Anyways, thanks for the idea. –  Sicarius Noctis Nov 29 '10 at 0:58

While I am d'accord with the answers you got already, I want to add a simple but powerful approximation mechanism which you can use for any degree Bézier curves: You continually subdivide the curve using de Casteljau subdivision until the maximum distance of the control points of a sub-curve to the sub-curve's baseline is below some constant epsilon. In that case the sub-curve can be approximated by its baseline.

In fact, I believe this is the approach usually taken when a graphics subsystem has to draw a Bézier curve. But do not quote me on this, I do not have references at hand at the moment.

In practice it will look like this: (except the language is irrelevant)

public static Line[] toLineStrip(BezierCurve bezierCurve, double epsilon) {
ArrayList<Line> lines = new ArrayList<Line>();

Stack<BezierCurve> parts = new Stack<BezierCurve>();
parts.push(bezierCurve);

while (!parts.isEmpty()) {
BezierCurve curve = parts.pop();
if (distanceToBaseline(curve) < epsilon) {