Turntable takes a flat illustration and generates views of it from other angles: turned to the side, from behind, tilted up or down. Adobe first showed it as Project Turntable at MAX 2024, and it’s been a regular Illustrator feature since version 30.3. One generation gives you a whole set of views (Adobe lists 74 variations per generation), and each one stays an editable vector.
The results swing a lot depending on what you give it, though. This guide is synthesized from Adobe’s own documentation, a few hands-on reviews, and reports from early testers, plus general Illustrator technique. We haven’t run it through a full project ourselves.
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Pick art that suits it. Every source lands in the same place: Turntable is best with bold, graphic art of things that exist in the real world, like a character, mascot, animal, or simple prop, with simple shading and a clear silhouette. Adobe’s own tip is to use objects without a background that have recognizable angles. Logos, type, diagrams, and abstract geometric shapes are riskier, and for simple geometric objects Adobe points you to Illustrator’s regular 3D and Materials tools instead, which are more predictable.
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Prep a copy of the art. Work on a duplicate, isolated on its own artboard with no background behind it. Adobe’s docs list a handful of things Turntable doesn’t support, including freeform, radial, and mesh gradients, opacity and blending, Grain and Blur effects, live strokes, and area text. A practical step none of the sources spell out: before you run it, outline any strokes (Object > Path > Outline Stroke) and swap unsupported gradients for flat fills or a linear gradient. You don’t need to group the art first: Adobe dropped that requirement during the beta, so you can just select it and run Turntable.
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Run it and find your angle. Select the object and choose Object > Generative > Turntable. You’ll also find it in the Transform, Properties, and Control panels and the right-click menu. It takes a minute or so. Illustrator places the result as a linked Generative Object and keeps a copy of your original, which Adobe’s design team built specifically so your source art is never overwritten. In the Contextual Task Bar, the slider turns the object sideways up to 180 degrees either way, and the tilt arrows tip it 30 degrees up or down. You can combine the two. One reviewer found the slider moves in 15-degree steps, with nothing in between.
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Trust the near angles more than the far ones. Your drawing doesn’t contain its own back or underside, so Turntable has to invent them. One reviewer found the most reliable views sit within roughly the first 90 degrees of turn. Full side and back views are where things like a cap’s direction, facial features, and line weight variation drift away from the original. Plan on redrawing those, or using them as reference rather than final art.
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Pull out the views you want. Add next rotated view to left or right drops a neighboring angle onto the canvas as its own Generative Object. Place all views on canvas lays out the whole set at once, which is the quickest way to build a character turnaround sheet. Export as GIF makes a spinning loop, with options for view type, frame range, speed, direction, and background.
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Make edits stick. This is the part that catches people. If you edit a view in isolation mode and then move the slider again, Adobe says those edits are lost. To keep a view for good, duplicate the Generative Object and ungroup it. That breaks its link to the other views, so do it only once you’ve settled on an angle. Generation History (Object > Generative > Generation History) keeps track of what you’ve generated.
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Clean up like it’s a first draft. Ungrouped views are regular vectors, but testers noted the generated shapes are split apart differently from how you probably built the original, which matters if your style relies on overlapping, layered shapes. Rebuilding key areas with the Shape Builder tool and matching stroke weights back to your original is usually faster than drawing the angle from scratch, and it’s where the time savings actually come from.
Why it matters for designers
Turnarounds are tedious and they eat budget, especially early in a project when you’re still selling the idea. According to 9to5Mac’s launch coverage, animators used Turntable during its beta to speed up character turnarounds for pitch decks, and game designers used it for concept art. For brand work, it’s a quick way to see a mascot from a three-quarter angle for a layout, or to make a spinning GIF for social, without opening a 3D app.
It’s also clear about what it isn’t. Turntable makes 2D views, not a 3D model, so there’s no mesh to export or camera to set up. That keeps the flat, drawn look of your style, which is exactly what Illustrator’s 3D tools tend to lose with organic art.
What to watch out for
Credits are the first thing to check. Adobe lists Turntable at 20 generative credits per generation, compared with one for most standard features, so experimenting on lots of pieces adds up fast. See the sidebar for details.
Sources disagree a bit on how good the results are, and it mostly comes down to the art. Reviews of simple, cartoony objects are enthusiastic. Testers working with detailed or highly stylized illustration were much less impressed, reporting lost details and flattened line quality on the far angles. Some of the harshest reports date from the beta, and Adobe says the feature was refined before release, so it’s worth testing on your own style before you commit to it for a client job.
Finally, the generated views are an interpretation. They aren’t guaranteed to be evenly spaced, consistent, or physically accurate, and anything hidden in your original (a back pocket, a logo on the far side) is invented. Check every view you keep against your own idea of the character before it goes anywhere.
