Matrix Form of Bezier Curves

Bezier curves are most often talked about either in terms of the De Casteljau algorithm, or in terms of a mathematical function (Bernstein Polynomials).

Every now and then though, you see people talking about Bezier curves being calculated via matrices. If you ever wondered what that was all about, this post should hopefully explain and demystify that a bit.

If you don’t know how to come up with the equation of a Bezier curve for any number of control points, you should give this a read first:
Easy Binomial Expansion & Bezier Curve Formulas

And if you are curious about the De Casteljau algorithm, you can learn about that here:
The De Casteljau Algorithm for Evaluating Bezier Curves

Ok, all read up on that stuff? Let’s get talking about Bezier curves in matrix form! There are shadertoy links at the end with working wegl glsl demos that include source code.

Making the Matrix Form of Bezier Curves

Coming up with the matrix for a Bezier curve is surprisingly easy. Keep in mind the matrix we are making is for glsl which is a column major matrix order, so you might have to adjust things if you are using a row major matrix order setup (mostly, just transpose the matrix).

The first step is to get the formula for a Bezier curve. We’ll work through the example using a quadratic Bezier curve with 3 control points A,B,C, so we start with the formula below:

f(t) = A*(1-t)^2 + B*2t(1-t) + C*t^2

The next step is to break the equation into one equation per term. Each term has a control point, so we are basically splitting the formula up so that we have one formula per control point.

A*(1-t)^2 \\ B*2t(1-t) \\ C*t^2

Next, we remove the control points and expand each term to get:

1-2t+t^2 \\ 2t-2t^2 \\ t^2

Now, explicitly values of all powers of t that are present:
1*t^0-2*t^1+1*t^2 \\ 0*t^0+2*t^1-2*t^2 \\ 0*t^0+0*t^1+1*t^2

Now the final step. Take the constants that multiply your powers of t and make a matrix out of them. You are done!

\begin{bmatrix} 1 & -2 & 1 \\ 0 & 2 & -2 \\ 0 & 0 & 1 \\ \end{bmatrix}

Using the Matrix Form

Using the matrix form of Bezier curves is also pretty simple.

First, we need to make a vector of the power series of our t value:

powerSeries = \begin{bmatrix} t^0 & t^1 & t^2 \\ \end{bmatrix}

Which can also be written as:

powerSeries = \begin{bmatrix} 1 & t & t^2 \\ \end{bmatrix}

You also need a vector of your control points:

controlPoints = \begin{bmatrix} A & B & C \\ \end{bmatrix}

You next perform this operation to get a result vector:

result = powerSeries * curveMatrix * controlPoints

Then, you add up all components of result to get the value of the curve at time t.

value = result[0] + result[1] + result[2]

All done!

Note that this is a one dimensional Bezier curve. You need to do this operation once per axis to get your final multi dimensional Bezier curve point.

If you are confused by that last line, check out this post: One Dimensional Bezier Curves

Multiplying the Control Points In

You might notice that if you are evaluating several points on the same curve that you are going to be multiplying the curveMatrix matrix by the controlPoints vector over and over. You can multiply the control points into the Bezier curve matrix to make the specific matrix for those control points if you want to. You multiply the columns of the matrix by the control points, and adjust the result calculation like the below.

// Multiply the control points into the curve matrix
curveMatrix[0] *= A;
curveMatrix[1] *= B;
curveMatrix[2] *= C;

// Use the curve matrix that has the control points baked in, to do less math to get the result vector.
// You would calculate the curve matrix once and re-use it multiple times of course!
vec3 result = powerSeries * curveMatrix;
float value = result.x + result.y + result.z;

Closing

You might wonder when you’d use the matrix form. One time to use the matrix form would be when you had fast matrix math support (like on the GPU). Another time to use the matrix form though is if you ever want to cut up a Bezier curve into multiple smaller sub curves. The matrix form can help make that easier, and you can read more about that here if you want: A Matrix Formulation of the Cubic Bezier Curve

Here are some shadertoys that show this all working in webgl/glsl pixel shaders, along with source code:

Shadertoy: 1D Linear Bezier Matrix Form
Shadertoy: 1D Quadratic Bezier Matrix Form
Shadertoy: 1D Cubic Bezier Matrix Form

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