Drawing lines with continuously varying line width on HTML canvas

Question

I\'m trying to draw a line that starts as a thin line and then gadually widens until the end. I need to draw semi-smooth curves (composite out of several straight lines) and I\'

Answer 1

For those interested, I have come up with two solutions to my problem.

The first idea was to actually draw each point as a corner, using canvas to draw a neat angle. A demo can be seen at:

http://jsfiddle.net/7BkyK/2/

var ctx = document.getElementById('canvas1').getContext('2d');
var points = [null, null, null];

for(var i=0; i<24; i++)
{
    var width = 0.5 + i/2;

    var m = 200;

    var x = Math.cos(i/4) * 180;
    var y = Math.sin(i/4) * 140;

    points[0] = points[1];
    points[1] = points[2];
    points[2] = { X:x, Y:y};

    if(points[0] == null)
        continue;

    var px0 = (points[0].X + points[1].X) / 2;
    var py0 = (points[0].Y + points[1].Y) / 2;

    var px1 = (points[1].X + points[2].X) / 2;
    var py1 = (points[1].Y + points[2].Y) / 2;

    ctx.beginPath();
    ctx.lineWidth = width;
    ctx.strokeStyle = "rgba(0,0,0,0.5)";
    ctx.moveTo(m+px0,m+py0);
    ctx.lineTo(m+points[1].X,m+points[1].Y);
    ctx.lineTo(m+px1,m+py1);
    ctx.stroke();
}
​

The second and much prettier solution, as suggested by Shmiddty, is to use bezier curves. This proved to be a great solution:

http://jsfiddle.net/Ssrv9/1/

// 1.
// Varying line width, stroking each piece of line separately
var ctx = document.getElementById('canvas1').getContext('2d');
var points = [null, null, null, null];

for(var i=-1; i<25; i = i +1)
{
    var width = 0.5 + i/2;

    var m = 200;


    var x = Math.cos(i/4) * 180;
    var y = Math.sin(i/4) * 140;

    points[0] = points[1];
    points[1] = points[2];
    points[2] = { X:x, Y:y};

    if(points[0] == null)
        continue;


    var p0 = points[0];
    var p1 = points[1];
    var p2 = points[2];

    var x0 = (p0.X + p1.X) / 2;
    var y0 = (p0.Y + p1.Y) / 2;

    var x1 = (p1.X + p2.X) / 2;
    var y1 = (p1.Y + p2.Y) / 2;

    ctx.beginPath();
    ctx.lineWidth = width;
    ctx.strokeStyle = "black";

    ctx.moveTo(m+x0, m+y0);
    ctx.quadraticCurveTo(m+p1.X, m+p1.Y, m+x1, m+y1);
    ctx.stroke();
}

​