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Karl Stiefvater

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Karl Stiefvater
Head-and-shoulders photograph of Karl Stiefvater
Karl Stiefvater
Born (1970-02-20) February 20, 1970 (age 56)[1]
Other namesqarl; Qarl Linden (Second Life avatar name)[2][3]
EducationWashington University in St. Louis (BS, computer science)[4]
OccupationSoftware engineer
Known forRiven shaders · sculpted prims in Second Life · Pikazo

Karl Stiefvater is an American computer graphics software engineer and visual effects artist based in St. Louis, Missouri.[5][6] He wrote the lighting and water shaders of the 1997 video game Riven and spun that work into the shader company Lume,[7][8] then worked on visual effects for The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, and 300.[9][10][11] He later created the "sculpted prims" building feature of the virtual world Second Life[2][3][12] and built the neural style transfer app Pikazo.[13][11] He was nominated for a News & Documentary Emmy Award in 2011 for The Virtual Mine, an educational Second Life project,[14][15] and is the co-founder and chief executive of the custom snow-globe company Snow Day.[16][10]

Early life and education

[edit]

Stiefvater was born on February 20, 1970, and grew up in his family's funeral home in St. Peters, Missouri.[1][11][17] He was first published nationally as a high-school sophomore, when the Atari magazine ANALOG Computing ran his boot utility "Load It" in February 1986.[18][19] He graduated from St. Louis University High School and earned a Bachelor of Science in computer science from Washington University in St. Louis in 1992.[6][4][20]

Career

[edit]

Riven and Lume

[edit]

Stiefvater served as computer graphics technical director on Riven, the 1997 sequel to Myst developed by Cyan.[7][21][22] In Richard Kadrey's making-of book From Myst to Riven, Myst co-creator Robyn Miller said of his shader work: "The custom shaders really saved us. We could never get the water right with the shaders we started with. But once Karl wrote one that worked, we kept asking him to do others."[21] According to Computer Graphics World, he "created several suites of shaders that Cyan artists used to produce realistic lighting, water, camera lens, and landscape effects",[7] including an HDR glare shader[17] used throughout the game.[7] The magazine reported that the shaders "have proven themselves so well that a spin-off company Lume, Inc. (San Francisco), will be selling them".[7] Stiefvater founded Lume in 1996 and served as its president;[8][1] its LumeTools shader collection was later ported to the other major 3D packages.[23][24] Months before the game shipped, the February 1997 Computer Graphics World put Riven on its cover, crediting Cyan's use of Lume's shaders,[25] and made LumeTools the final pick of its survey of "a sampling of some of the best" 3D plug-ins.[26]

Film visual effects

[edit]

Stiefvater worked on visual effects for The Matrix Reloaded (2003) at Sony Pictures Imageworks, where he built tooling for the fiery destruction of the Nebuchadnezzar hovership — a sequence partly inspired by documentary footage of the Hindenburg disaster. "We broke the outer skin apart procedurally," Imageworks visual effects supervisor Jim Berney told Cinefex. "Karl Stiefvater created a map-driven device that allowed geometry to fragment but maintain its texture, so the skin could burn along predescribed lines and open up."[9] On The Matrix Revolutions (2003), at ESC Entertainment, he created the swarming-sentinel destruction effects used in the film's battle sequences.[10][19]

For the film 300 (2007), working at Meteor Studios in Montreal,[1] he animated the wheat-field sequences using procedural displacement maps[12][10] and reworked the effects of its "infamous bottomless pit" — in one profile's telling, "down to the specks of dirt on individual bricks inside the well".[11][5]

Linden Lab and Second Life

[edit]

Stiefvater joined Linden Lab, the developer of Second Life, where he worked under the avatar name Qarl Linden. He created "sculpted prims" — or "sculpties" — a building feature that let residents make organic shapes, defined by textures rather than mesh coordinates.[2][3][12] Announced in April 2007 and released across the platform that May, the feature arrived with Stiefvater giving away sculpted fruit in-world — Axel Springer's Second Life weekly The AvaStar photographed the giveaway in its launch-week issue.[27] Daniel Terdiman's 2008 book The Entrepreneur's Guide to Second Life profiled him as the feature's creator, calling the sculpted prim "to many people, the most exciting Second Life technological innovation in recent memory".[12] He also built touch-position detection for scripted objects,[3][28][29] presented "Open Source in Second Life" at the May 2008 Libre Graphics Meeting in Wrocław,[30] and later that year drew notice from New World Notes for opening his quarterly performance review to Second Life residents' comments.[31][32]

In August 2010, while he was at work on the platform's mesh-import feature, Linden Lab laid Stiefvater off — a move that drew protest from the Second Life community, including a petition for his reinstatement.[2][3][33] Reporting the layoff, blogger Tateru Nino published excerpts of an internal performance review that praised his work.[34][33] Later that month he joined the development team of Emerald, then one of the most popular third-party Second Life viewers, used by as many as half of its residents,[35][36] and kept building tools for the platform's users — including a prim-alignment tool that third-party viewers adopted[37][38][39] and that Linden Lab, in 2012, declined to merge into its own.[40]

In October 2011, Second Life content creators hired Stiefvater themselves: a fundraiser launched by designer Maxwell Graf met its goal in under three weeks, paying him to develop a "parametric mesh deformer" that would make mesh clothing fit diverse avatar shapes.[41][42] Essayist Gwyneth Llewelyn described the arrangement as a new, community-funded model of Second Life development.[43] He released an alpha at the end of 2011,[44][45] but Linden Lab never adopted the code;[46] when the company announced its own "Fitted Mesh" approach in November 2013,[47] Stiefvater called its technical reasoning "mostly good" while criticizing "the two year delay and refusal to communicate".[46] The competing virtual world InWorldz paid him to complete the deformer for its own viewer in 2013.[48] That October, he left Second Life altogether — deleting the virtual region he had kept for eight years in protest of the platform's revised terms of service: "the second life terms of service, as it is currently written, lets LL steal all of my intellectual property. shame on you LL."[49][50]

The Virtual Mine

[edit]

Stiefvater was the software engineer of The Virtual Mine, a Sand Castle Studios project that created an interactive Second Life companion to the PBS Independent Lens documentary Deep Down: A Story From the Heart of Coal Country. It was nominated for a 2011 News & Documentary Emmy Award (New Approaches to News & Documentary Programming: Documentaries), with Stiefvater among the individually credited nominees.[14][15]

Magic Ink and Pikazo

[edit]

Stiefvater's iPad finger-painting app Magic Ink simulated a springy brush whose calligraphic strokes began to disappear the moment the finger left the screen; he described its recipe as "one part doodle, one part dance, one part calligraphy, one part springs, one part clouds, four parts imagination".[51][52] O'Reilly Media's 2011 guide Best iPad Apps selected it as "Best App for Drawings that Disappear" — "as much a piece of interactive performance art" as a drawing tool, in the guide's words.[52]

In September 2015, The Washington Post published Stiefvater's series of United States presidential portraits re-rendered in the style of Pablo Picasso using a neural style transfer algorithm.[53] The response led him to build Pikazo, an iOS app applying neural style transfer to users' photos.[13] The Riverfront Times profiled Stiefvater — a St. Louis native who had returned to the city in 2011 — ahead of the app's App Store debut on November 15, 2015.[54][55] Within a month of launch, Pikazo reached No. 1 overall on iPhone App Store charts in two European markets.[56] That December, Steven Levy featured Stiefvater in a Backchannel article on the neural-art movement, writing that he "feels that breaking down even the most radical forms of genius is ultimately a math problem": "I like artistic creativity, [but] I am not of the belief that [that creation] is supernatural. It's a mechanism — a cogwork."[57] St. Louis Magazine reported that within weeks of launch the app had processed more than 100,000 images — more than a million by the following spring.[6][58] In December 2016, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch profiled the company — calling Stiefvater "the Pikazo mastermind" — and reported that partnerships with Amazon and Intel had let it make the app free, that Apple had requested a Siri integration in exchange for featured placement, and that the team had released a companion app, Coloring Book by Pikazo.[11]

Snow Day

[edit]

In 2012, Stiefvater made a custom snow globe of his family's house — modeled from photographs and 3D-printed — as a surprise gift for his wife, Lisa Donahue; his tutorial for the build was featured by Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing.[59][60][61] Six years later, the gift became a company: Snow Day, co-founded in St. Louis with Donahue and Amy VanDonsel and led by Stiefvater as chief executive, builds custom snow globes around 3D-printed full-color miniatures generated from customers' video by photogrammetry.[62][16][63][10] When Hidden Valley Ranch commissioned a globe for its holiday gift catalog — a miniature ranch-dressing bottle in a Santa hat — the run sold out within days.[16]

Teaching

[edit]

Stiefvater returned to Washington University's computer science department in the late 1990s as a lecturer on graphics.[20] Between 1998 and 2001 he created and taught undergraduate courses there: a graphics laboratory focused on 3D rendering, a genetic-algorithms laboratory, and "Computational Art" — a survey of generative techniques, from L-systems and fractals to artificial life, whose output media ran from video and plotters to embroidery machines, cookies, and 3D fabricators.[64][65][66][67] He also lectured the department's formal-foundations course.[68] Out of the computational-art program came "waterworks", a student-built water-simulation installation — in his description, a "lifesize interactive virtual shower" — exhibited in the Emerging Technologies program of SIGGRAPH 2001 and at galleries and other venues through 2003.[19][69][70]

A decade later, between 2011 and 2013, he taught recurring eight-week online courses for CGWorkshops, the CGSociety's training program: "Creating Maya Plugins", on extending Maya through its C++ API, and "Writing Shaders for Renderman and Mental Ray".[71][72][17][73]

References

[edit]
  1. 1 2 3 4 Stiefvater, Karl (June 11, 2026). "about". qarl.com. Archived from the original on June 12, 2026. i was born February 20, 1970. i grew up in my family's funeral home in St. Peters, Missouri. … i worked on 300 - specifically the wheat fields and the bottomless pit sequences - at Meteor Studios in Montreal.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Au, Wagner James (August 5, 2010). "Requiem for Qarl Linden: The Man Who Helped Make The Matrix No Longer Helps Linden Lab Make the Metaverse". New World Notes. Archived from the original on September 12, 2025.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Korolov, Maria (August 5, 2010). "Qarl Linden's layoff is bad news for OpenSim". Hypergrid Business. Archived from the original on August 19, 2025.
  4. 1 2 Hollerbach, Bryan A. (March 23, 2017). "Turn Your Pictures Into True Works of Art with Pikazo". Ladue News. Archived from the original on August 21, 2017.
  5. 1 2 "Pikazo App Remakes Your Photos into Artwork". Entrepreneur Quarterly. November 6, 2015. Archived from the original on July 29, 2021. …they called in Stiefvater who worked on the special effects down to the specks of dirt on individual bricks inside the well.
  6. 1 2 3 Toler, Lindsay (December 7, 2015). "St. Louis App Pikazo Will Turn Your Profile Picture Into a Work of Art". St. Louis Magazine. Archived from the original on June 6, 2023.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 Forcade, Tim (February 1998). "Unraveling Riven". Computer Graphics World. Archived from the original on October 28, 2005. Karl Stiefvater, CG technical director, created several suites of shaders that Cyan artists used to produce realistic lighting, water, camera lens, and landscape effects. … Stiefvater developed a glare shader to provide a realistic flare around brightly highlighted areas. It was used throughout the game… these shaders have proven themselves so well that a spin-off company Lume, Inc. (San Francisco), will be selling them not only for Softimage but for 3DS MAX, Alias/Wavefront, and LightWave as well.
  8. 1 2 "Softimage Releases New Softimage SDK Version 1.7" (Press release). Softimage/Microsoft. April 7, 1997. said Karl Stiefvater, founder and president of Lume Inc.
  9. 1 2 Fordham, Joe (October 2003). "Neo Realism". Cinefex. No. 95. pp. 84–127. 'We broke the outer skin apart procedurally,' explained Imageworks visual effects supervisor Jim Berney. 'Karl Stiefvater created a map-driven device that allowed geometry to fragment but maintain its texture, so the skin could burn along predescribed lines and open up.' (p. 122)
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 Phillips, Nicholas (June 20, 2019). "Fine print: Snow Day creates 3D-printed miniature replicas and suspends them in snow globes". Missouri Lawyers Media (Startup Missouri). Archived from the original on November 28, 2023. Stiefvater is the CEO of Snow Day, a startup in St. Louis that makes custom, one-of-a-kind snow globes.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 Bass, Debra D. (December 8, 2016). "St. Louis company's photo app uses programming magic to create art". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Stiefvater is a visual effects artist who worked on very complex effects for the iconic "Matrix" film series as well as the infamous bottomless pit from "300" among other projects. … Lisa Donahue, a partner in the business and wife of Stiefvater, the Pikazo mastermind.
  12. 1 2 3 4 Terdiman, Daniel (2008). The Entrepreneur's Guide to Second Life: Making Money in the Metaverse. John Wiley & Sons (Sybex). pp. 273–275. ISBN 978-0-470-17914-7. The Sculpted-Prims Creator: Linden Lab Engineer Qarl Linden… For Qarl Linden (Figure 11.3), who created sculpted prims, they are his baby. … To many people, the most exciting Second Life technological innovation in recent memory is the sculpted prim (sculptie).
  13. 1 2 Biggs, John (December 11, 2015). "How Pikazo Turns Your Photos Into Magic". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on December 12, 2015. The creators Karl Stiefvater and Noah Rosenberg have worked together for years.
  14. 1 2 "Nominees for the 32nd Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards Announced" (Press release). National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. July 18, 2011. Archived from the original on November 26, 2020.
  15. 1 2 Hand, Randall (July 2011). "The Virtual Mine Receives an Emmy Nomination". Vizworld. Archived from the original on July 23, 2011. Karl Stiefvater (Software Engineer)
  16. 1 2 3 Eby, Pat (November 30, 2018). "Made in St. Louis: Custom snow globes use 3D imaging to put your home in a globe". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Archived from the original on December 25, 2020.
  17. 1 2 3 "Instructor: Karl Stiefvater". CGWorkshops (CGSociety). 2012. Archived from the original on August 22, 2012. Karl Stiefvater is a visual effects artist with over 20 years experience in the field of computer graphics.
  18. ↑ Stiefvater, Karl (February 1986). "Load It". ANALOG Computing. No. 39. p. 31. Load·It — Karl Stiefvater — 31 — Autoboots any BASIC or machine language program.
  19. 1 2 3 Stiefvater, Karl. "Resume". qarl.com. Archived from the original on June 22, 2006. created and taught courses in computer graphics… coordinated a student effort to create (with a budget of $500) a real-time virtual water environment. 'The Waterworks' has shown at several prestigious events, including SIGGRAPH 2001.
  20. 1 2 "Some Graduates' Stories: Karl Stiefvater, B.Sc. 1992". cs.wustl.edu. Department of Computer Science, Washington University in St. Louis. Archived from the original on September 3, 1999. Karl has rejoined our department as a lecturer on graphics and part of the technical staff supporting research computing.
  21. 1 2 Kadrey, Richard (1997). From Myst to Riven: The Creations & Inspirations. Hyperion. The custom shaders really saved us. We could never get the water right with the shaders we started with. But once Karl wrote one that worked, we kept asking him to do others.
  22. ↑ "Softimage and Mental Images Further Strategic Relationship" (Press release). Softimage/Microsoft. January 15, 1997. Karl Stiefvater, Riven technical director for Cyan Inc.
  23. ↑ "Lume Inc. Launches LumeTools Collection for Softimage Mental Ray" (Press release). Microsoft. June 19, 1997.
  24. ↑ Masson, Terrence (2007). CG 101: A Computer Graphics Industry Reference (2nd ed.). p. 157. LumeTools: Originally developed in 1996 by founders Karl Stiefvater and Tim Greenberg in conjunction with Cyan, Inc. for use in Riven (the sequel to the CD game Myst).
  25. ↑ "Table of Contents — On the Cover". Computer Graphics World. Vol. 20, no. 2. February 1997. Archived from the original on June 12, 1997. This month's cover comes from a forthcoming CD-ROM game called Riven… Among the tools Cyan is using to create Riven are Softimage 3D and plug-ins from Lume Inc., which created its LumeTools Collection of shaders to help Cyan meet its production needs.
  26. ↑ Forcade, Tim (February 1997). "3D Plug-Ins Proliferate". Computer Graphics World. Vol. 20, no. 2. pp. 32–38. ...a sampling of some of the best... (p. 32) ... My final choice comes from Lume, which developed its LumeTools Collection of shaders to meet the daily production demands of Riven, game-developer Cyan's upcoming sequel to the popular Myst. (p. 38)
  27. ↑ "Sculpties arrive in SL!" (PDF). The AvaStar. No. 23. Axel Springer. May 25, 2007. p. 2. LAWRENCE and Qarl Linden gave away sculpted fruit and plates soon after 'sculpties' were introduced in Wednesday's update.
  28. ↑ Llewelyn, Gwyneth (August 9, 2008). "A Touching Event". Archived from the original on August 7, 2025.
  29. ↑ Moore, Dana; Thome, Michael; Haigh, Karen (2008). Scripting Your World: The Official Guide to Second Life Scripting. Wiley. pp. 337–339. ISBN 978-0-470-33983-1. Qarl Linden introduced an expanded version of the concept in March 2008… An implementation of Qarl's proposal has been committed to the official server.
  30. ↑ "Program — Libre Graphics Meeting 2008, Wrocław". libregraphicsmeeting.org. 2008. Archived from the original on February 24, 2026. Karl Stiefvater (Second Life) — Open Source in Second Life — Friday 9th May (talk recording: River Valley Technologies, youtube.com/watch?v=lctM-gYclA0)
  31. ↑ Stiefvater, Karl (October 16, 2008). "please evaluate my performance". qLab (qarl.com). Archived from the original on September 19, 2015. this time around, i'd like the residents to participate in my review
  32. ↑ Au, Wagner James (October 17, 2008). "How's Qarl Doing? A Linden Lab Staffer Asks Second Life Residents To Help Do His Employee Evaluation". New World Notes. Archived from the original on November 8, 2008.
  33. 1 2 Nino, Tateru (August 5, 2010). "Qarl Linden laid off". Dwell On It. Archived from the original on August 19, 2010.
  34. ↑ Stiefvater, Karl (July 23, 2010). "Q210 Manager Review". qLab (qarl.com). Archived from the original on August 19, 2010. Can I say how invaluable you are to the render team? ... You did a ton of work to get mesh ready for public beta. ... 23 July 2010 - Q210 Manager Review
  35. ↑ Au, Wagner James (August 16, 2010). "Ex-Linden Lab Developer Karl Stiefvater Joins Development of Emerald, The Popular Third Party Second Life Viewer". New World Notes. Archived from the original on September 12, 2025.
  36. ↑ Lefebvre, Eliot (August 24, 2010). "Second Life's Emerald client facing obsolescence". Engadget. Archived from the original on April 22, 2021. The Emerald client, one of the most popular third-party viewers — estimated to be used by as many as half of all players — has fallen out of favor with Linden Labs and is no longer an officially endorsed option.
  37. ↑ Stiefvater, Karl (October 20, 2010). "setting things straight". qLab (qarl.com). Archived from the original on October 28, 2010. it makes me completely crazy that there's no alignment tool in the second life viewer. so i made one. third party viewers ... please feel free to include this code into yours
  38. ↑ Au, Wagner James (October 22, 2010). "Ex-Qarl Linden Creates an Alignment Tool for Second Life Building, Offers Code to Third Party Viewers". New World Notes. Archived from the original on September 17, 2025.
  39. ↑ "The Toolbox Window: Upper Section". Phoenix Firestorm Project wiki. November 23, 2023. Archived from the original on March 10, 2024. Align: This activates the prim alignment function. The use of this is best explained in this tutorial video by the tool's creator, Qarl Fizz.
  40. ↑ "[STORM-468] Add Qarl Fizz Prim Alignment Code". Second Life Bug Tracker (jira.secondlife.com). Linden Lab. 2012. Archived from the original on January 26, 2012. Status: Closed ... Resolution: Won't Finish
  41. ↑ "Users join forces to fix mesh". Hypergrid Business. October 2011. Archived from the original on October 8, 2011. it will cost $5,400 to build the mesh deformer, and the work will be carried out by Karl Stiefvater (formerly Qarl Linden)
  42. ↑ Au, Wagner James (October 25, 2011). "Challenge Accepted: SL Users Raise $5400 to Hire Ex-Linden to Fix SL Mesh Issues in Under 3 Weeks". New World Notes. Archived from the original on September 12, 2025.
  43. ↑ Llewelyn, Gwyneth (October 18, 2011). "New model for software development for Second Life?". Archived from the original on August 11, 2025.
  44. ↑ Stiefvater, Karl (December 31, 2011). "virtual tailoring". qLab (qarl.com). Archived from the original on January 7, 2012.
  45. ↑ Au, Wagner James (January 2, 2012). "Ex-Linden Karl Stiefvater Explains How His Crowdfunded Code Improves SL Mesh". New World Notes. Archived from the original on September 13, 2025.
  46. 1 2 "[STORM-1716] Mesh Deformer for tailoring mesh clothing". Second Life Bug Tracker (jira.secondlife.com). Linden Lab. 2013. Archived from the original on April 3, 2015. Status: Closed; Resolution: Won't Finish. Qarl Fizz comment (20 Nov 2013): "LL's assessment here is mostly good ... i will reiterate that the two year delay and refusal to communicate are unacceptable."
  47. ↑ Linden Lab (November 20, 2013). "Making Mesh Garments Fit Better". Second Life Community (community.secondlife.com). Archived from the original on November 23, 2013.
  48. ↑ Korolov, Maria (July 15, 2013). "InWorldz brings mesh deformer to OpenSim". Hypergrid Business. Archived from the original on August 12, 2025.
  49. ↑ Stiefvater, Karl (October 16, 2013). "goodbye, second life". qLab (qarl.com). Archived from the original on October 20, 2013. i just deleted my sim… because the second life terms of service, as it is currently written, lets LL steal all of my intellectual property. shame on you LL.
  50. ↑ Pey, Inara (October 17, 2013). "Qarl: "Goodbye, Second Life"". Living in a Modemworld. Archived from the original on April 13, 2021.
  51. ↑ Stiefvater, Karl (2011). "Magic Ink — App Store description". iTunes App Store (Apple). Archived from the original on May 13, 2011. Ingredients: one part doodle, one part dance, one part calligraphy, one part springs, one part clouds, four parts imagination.
  52. 1 2 Meyers, Peter (2011). Best iPad Apps: The Guide for Discriminating Downloaders. O'Reilly Media. p. 112. ISBN 978-1-4493-9247-5. Best App for Drawings that Disappear — Magic Ink — Free — Version: 1.0 — Karl Stiefvater… it's as much a piece of interactive performance art; a philosophical gesture from its creator… What you write begins to disappear as soon as your finger leaves the screen.
  53. ↑ McFarland, Matt (September 14, 2015). "Here's what it would look like if Picasso had painted the presidential portraits". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on August 9, 2016.
  54. ↑ "Born in St. Louis, Pikazo Is Going to Be the Next Big Photo App". Riverfront Times. November 9, 2015. Archived from the original on November 17, 2015. Karl Stiefvater, the app's St. Louis-based inventor... Stiefvater moved back to St. Louis in 2011
  55. ↑ Fenske, Sarah (November 16, 2015). "Pikazo Makes App Store Debut". Riverfront Times. Archived from the original on November 17, 2015. made its debut at the app store last night
  56. ↑ "Pikazo — Store Ranks (hourly & historic rank data)". Appfigures. Retrieved June 12, 2026. No. 1 "in top overall": Norway, November 20–21, 2015; Poland, December 14–15, 2015 (iPhone, app ID 1048273143).
  57. ↑ Levy, Steven (December 11, 2015). "Inside Deep Dreams: How Google Made Its Computers Go Crazy". Backchannel (republished by Wired). Archived from the original on December 14, 2017. One eager participant was Karl Stiefvater, a computer graphics specialist (he wrote the code that blew up Neo's spaceship in The Matrix trilogy; more recently he built key graphics tools for Linden Labs). … Stiefvater of Pikazo feels that breaking down even the most radical forms of genius is ultimately a math problem. 'I like artistic creativity, [but] I am not of the belief that [that creation] is supernatural,' he says. 'It's a mechanism — a cogwork.'
  58. ↑ Powell, William (April 14, 2016). "New App Pikazo Turns Your Photos Into Amazing Works of Art". St. Louis Magazine. Archived from the original on October 3, 2023.
  59. ↑ Doctorow, Cory (January 6, 2012). "HOWTO make a custom snowglobe of your house". Boing Boing. Archived from the original on June 20, 2025.
  60. ↑ "3D print you home to be a snow globe scene". 3ders.org. January 5, 2012. Archived from the original on March 9, 2023. Artist Karl Stiefvater made this special and creative Christmas present for his wife
  61. ↑ Hollerbach, Bryan A. (December 6, 2018). "Not Your Grandma's Snow Globe". Ladue News. Archived from the original on July 23, 2019. In 2012, Karl made a snow globe as a surprise gift for his wife… The tutorial caught the interest of blogger, journalist and science fiction author Cory Doctorow, who published it on Boing Boing.
  62. ↑ Fenske, Sarah (October 11, 2018). "Snow Day, New St. Louis Startup, Will Capture Your House in a Snow Globe". Riverfront Times. Archived from the original on April 18, 2021.
  63. ↑ Stevenson, Samantha (November 9, 2018). "Create a custom snow globe with a 3-D print of your home". St. Louis Magazine. Archived from the original on September 28, 2023.
  64. ↑ Stiefvater, Karl (1998). "CS323A Syllabus Fall 1998 – Focus on 3D Rendering". qarl.com. Archived from the original on May 29, 2001.
  65. ↑ Stiefvater, Karl (1999). "Genetic Algorithms Lab (CS373A), Spring 1999". qarl.com. Archived from the original on May 7, 2001.
  66. ↑ Stiefvater, Karl (2000). "Computational Art, Fall 2000". qarl.com. Archived from the original on August 2, 2001. Final projects will be put on display in the Computer Science Department… and additionally submitted to the SIGGRAPH 2001 Electronic Art Gallery.
  67. ↑ "Spring 2001 Course Schedule". cs.wustl.edu. Department of Computer Science, Washington University in St. Louis. 2001. Archived from the original on April 28, 2001. instructor roster includes "42 Stiefvater"
  68. ↑ Stiefvater, Karl (1999). "CS201 Formal Foundations of Computer Science, Spring 1999". qarl.com. Archived from the original on August 2, 2001. Instructor Karl Stiefvater
  69. ↑ Stiefvater, Karl. "The Waterworks". qarl.com. Archived from the original on October 14, 2024. the waterworks - a lifesize interactive virtual shower… the waterworks was conceived of and built by Karl Stiefvater… as a part of his computational art program through the computer science department at washington university.
  70. ↑ "waterworks — Emerging Technologies, Chair's Prerogative Exhibit". SIGGRAPH 2001. ACM SIGGRAPH. 2001. Archived from the original on September 19, 2015.
  71. ↑ "Creating Maya Plugins – Nov 2012". CGWorkshops (CGSociety). 2012. Archived from the original on January 26, 2013. 05 Nov 2012 - 07 Jan 2013… The Matrix and Second Life veteran Karl Stiefvater shows you how to reach into the heart of Maya and change it to do YOUR bidding.
  72. ↑ "Writing Shaders for Renderman and Mental Ray – August 2012". CGWorkshops (CGSociety). 2012. Archived from the original on January 26, 2013. 13 Aug 2012 - 08 Oct 2012… In this 8 week online vfx training course we jump into the deep waters of shader creation for the two most popular rendering engines: Renderman and mental ray.
  73. ↑ "qDisplacement Deformer for Maya for Feedback on Displacements in the Viewport". Lesterbanks. March 2, 2012. Archived from the original on April 12, 2026. Karl Stiefvater runs a course over at CGWorkshops on Creating Maya Plugins, and is sharing a plugin that he developed called qDisplacement for Maya.
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