TL;DR
Adobe’s Illustrator Turntable feature is now out of beta and available in Adobe Illustrator (as of March 2026). Powered by Adobe Firefly, it takes any 2D vector or raster illustration and generates up to 74 rotated views of it, including full horizontal rotation and vertical tilt. You can extract individual views as editable vectors, export a GIF, or hand them off to After Effects. It works best on standalone objects with clear, recognizable forms, like brand characters, product illustrations, and icons. Abstract shapes, live text, and heavily layered art with complex backgrounds are not supported.
If you’ve been hearing buzz about the Illustrator Turntable feature lately, the excitement is completely warranted. After debuting as a sneak preview at Adobe MAX 2024 and spending several months in beta, Turntable officially launched in the general release of Adobe Illustrator in March 2026, and it’s one of those updates that genuinely changes how certain projects get done.
So let’s get into exactly what it is, how to use it, what it’s good for, and where it still has its limits.
What Is the Illustrator Turntable Feature, Exactly?
The Illustrator Turntable feature is a generative AI tool, powered by Adobe Firefly, that takes a flat 2D object and generates multiple rotated views of it. Horizontal rotation, vertical tilt, different perspectives of the same illustration, all without you having to redraw anything from scratch.
According to Adobe’s official documentation, it can generate up to 74 editable multi-angle views from a single 2D vector, covering full 360-degree rotation around the vertical axis as well as upward and downward tilt. Each view it generates is a fully editable vector, so nothing gets flattened or rasterized in the process.
The idea behind it came directly from a pain point Adobe heard from customers repeatedly: manually redrawing characters and illustrations from multiple angles takes hours. Now it takes minutes.
Who Is Turntable Actually Built For?
Adobe positions the Illustrator Turntable feature as a tool for animation teams, game designers, and social media teams, and those are genuinely solid use cases. But there are also some really practical applications for designers working on brand identity and client deliverables.
A few situations where it makes a lot of sense:
Character or mascot design. If a client has a brand mascot or illustrated character, Turntable can generate the front, side, and back views you’d need for a proper character sheet. That’s a huge time-saver compared to building each angle manually in Figma or Illustrator from scratch.
Product illustrations. If you’re creating a stylized illustration of a physical product for a brand, Turntable can help you explore how it reads from different angles before you commit to a final direction.
Pitch decks and concept exploration. When you want to show a client multiple perspectives of an illustrated brand element without the overhead of fully developing each view, Turntable speeds up that exploration phase significantly.
GIFs and micro-animations. Turntable lets you export your views as a GIF file directly from the panel, which is useful for social content, email headers, or quick motion concepts.
How to Use the Illustrator Turntable Feature, Step by Step
Before you start, make sure you’re running the latest version of Adobe Illustrator (the standard release, not Beta). Turntable is now available in the general release as of March 2026, so you just need to be updated.
Step 1: Select your object. Use the Selection tool to select the object you want to run through Turntable. Remove any background first. Turntable works best with standalone objects that don’t have a background, so if your illustration is sitting on a colored shape or placed over other elements, isolate it before you proceed.
Step 2: Open Turntable. Go to Object > Generative > Turntable. You can also access it from the Generative button in the toolbar, the Transform panel (Window > Transform), the Transform section of the Properties panel, the Control panel, or by right-clicking the object and finding it in the context menu. Several ways in, which is nice.
Step 3: Understand what Illustrator just did. Once you activate Turntable, a few things happen. A Generative Object appears on the canvas, indicated by a special icon, and it links all your views to that object. The Contextual Task Bar appears with all the controls you need. A Generative Object group also appears in your Layers panel. Illustrator also keeps a copy of your original object as a separate group, so you’re not losing your source artwork.
Step 4: Use the Contextual Task Bar to explore your views. The Contextual Task Bar is where all the action happens. Here’s what each control does:
- Rotate view left or right slider: Drag this to rotate your illustration horizontally around its vertical axis.
- Tilt artwork up / Tilt artwork down: These buttons adjust the vertical angle, letting you look slightly down at the object or slightly up at it.
- Current Angle and Tilt display: Shows you the exact rotation and tilt values at any given point.
- Add next rotated view to left / Add next rotated view to right: These add the currently visible view to your canvas as a separate extracted view.
- Place all views on canvas: Drops all generated views onto the canvas at once, laid out in a row for easy comparison.
- Reset to original view: Takes you back to the original orientation.
Step 5: Extract the views you want. Once you find an angle you like, use “Add next rotated view” to extract it, or “Place all views on canvas” to drop everything at once. Extracted views are editable vectors you can work with further.
Step 6: Export as GIF (optional). If you want to turn your rotated views into a GIF, the export option is right there in the Contextual Task Bar. Useful if you’re producing motion assets or want to share a quick 360 preview with a client.
Accessing Views Later and Managing Generation History
If you close out of Turntable and want to get back into your views later, just select the Generative Object on your canvas and then select Turntable in the Contextual Task Bar or the Properties panel. All your linked views will be right where you left them.
You can also manage all your Turntable outputs from one place by going to Object > Generative > Generation History. This gives you a central hub for everything you’ve generated.
One important note: if you directly edit a view while in isolation mode, those edits will be lost the next time you move the slider in Turntable. If you want to make permanent edits to a specific view, you need to ungroup the Generative Object first. Since ungrouping breaks all the linked views, Adobe recommends creating a copy of the Generative Object before you do it, so you still have the linked version to go back to.
When to Use Turntable vs. Illustrator's 3D Features
This is a question that comes up a lot, and Adobe actually has a dedicated page to help you decide. The short version is this: use the Illustrator Turntable feature for real-world objects and illustrated characters that have recognizable forms. Use Illustrator’s built-in 3D effects for simple abstract objects, geometric shapes, or when you want to add stylized depth and perspective to text.
Turntable struggles with abstract shapes and loose illustrations because it relies on being able to interpret the object as something three-dimensional that exists in the real world. If it can’t make sense of the form, the generated views won’t be consistent or reliable.
What the Illustrator Turntable Feature Doesn't Support (Yet)
There are some object types the Illustrator Turntable feature currently doesn’t work with. Live text is one of them. If your design includes text that hasn’t been converted to outlines, Turntable won’t be able to process it correctly. Heavily layered artwork with complex backgrounds is also a challenge.
The beta community feedback was consistent on one point: Turntable works best with bold, graphic illustrations that have clear outlines and recognizable geometry. If your illustration style is very loose, textural, or abstract, you may get inconsistent results.
Also, outputs from the Illustrator Beta version are not currently eligible for commercial indemnification from Adobe, but since Turntable is now in the standard Illustrator release, that concern no longer applies for most users.
A Note on the After Effects Handoff
One of the more interesting aspects of the Illustrator Turntable feature is that it supports handoff to After Effects for design-to-motion workflows. If you’re working on a project where the brand illustration needs to be animated, having clean, properly extracted views already in your Illustrator file makes that motion handoff a lot more streamlined. This is a workflow detail worth keeping in mind if you collaborate with motion designers or do animation work yourself.
Next Steps: Start This Week
If you want to get hands-on with the Illustrator Turntable feature this week, here’s a practical way to start:
Update Illustrator first. Make sure you’re on the latest release. Turntable is in the standard version now, so no Beta installation needed.
Pull up a past illustration. Find a logo icon, mascot, or product illustration from a previous project that you own. Remove the background if there is one, isolate the main object, and run it through Turntable to see what it generates.
Try the “Place all views” option. Drop all generated views onto your canvas at once and see which angles are immediately useful versus which ones need cleanup. This will give you a realistic picture of where the tool shines and where it still needs some manual work on top.
Test the GIF export. Even if you don’t have a specific use for it right now, run an export to see the output format. Knowing what the GIF looks like will help you gauge whether it’s client-ready or more of a working-file preview.
Note what breaks. Try it on a few different illustration types, including something more abstract, just to see where it starts to fall apart. Understanding the limits of a tool is just as valuable as knowing what it can do.
As someone building a design business, that shift matters. Your clients are likely already in Canva. The tools you use to create for them are increasingly interoperable with Canva’s infrastructure. And the barrier to accessing professional-grade software, for you and for new designers entering the field, keeps dropping.
Cavalry Pro being free is a straightforward win for the design community. A professional motion design tool, available at no cost, with no feature restrictions for individual use. Whatever you think about Canva’s broader strategy, that’s a good outcome.
Putting together a brand presentation that includes multi-angle product or character illustrations? My Brand Presentation Template makes it easy to present those assets in a polished, client-ready format without building slides from scratch.
Stay in the Loop
Adobe keeps rolling out new generative features faster than most of us can keep up with. If you want a heads-up when new tools launch, tutorials drop, or I share something worth knowing for your design business, sign up for the newsletter below. I send practical updates you can actually use, not a flood of weekly emails.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Illustrator Turntable feature?
The Illustrator Turntable feature is a generative AI tool powered by Adobe Firefly that generates multiple rotated views of a 2D vector or raster object. It can produce up to 74 editable multi-angle views, including full horizontal rotation and vertical tilt, without you having to manually redraw the illustration from each angle.
Is Turntable available in the standard version of Adobe Illustrator?
Yes. As of March 2026, the Illustrator Turntable feature is available in the standard (non-Beta) release of Adobe Illustrator. You just need to be running the latest version.
Does Turntable work with any illustration?
Not every illustration type gets great results. The Illustrator Turntable feature works best with standalone objects that have a clear, recognizable real-world form, like illustrated characters, brand mascots, and product icons. It does not currently support live text, and it tends to produce inconsistent results with very abstract shapes or loosely drawn styles.
Can you export from Turntable as a GIF?
Yes. The Contextual Task Bar in Turntable includes a GIF export option, so you can turn your multi-angle views into an animated GIF directly from the panel.
Does the Illustrator Turntable feature use Adobe Firefly credits?
I cannot confirm the specific Firefly generative credit consumption details for Turntable as these may vary by plan and can change. Check your Adobe Creative Cloud account for current generative credit information.
Can I edit the views Turntable generates?
Yes, each extracted view is a fully editable vector. However, if you want to permanently edit a specific view within a Generative Object, you need to ungroup the Generative Object first (after making a copy of it), since ungrouping breaks the linked views.
What's the difference between Turntable and Illustrator's 3D effects?
Use the Turntable feature for real-world illustrated objects and characters that have recognizable three-dimensional forms. Use Illustrator’s built-in 3D effects for abstract geometric shapes or when adding stylized depth to text. The two tools serve different purposes and work best in different scenarios.
