Published on March 31, 2026
At last, after seven months of public beta testing, Turntable is available today in the latest release of Adobe Illustrator. Presented at the 2024 edition of the Adobe Max conference as a sneak preview, the tool uses generative AI to transform any 2D vector illustration into a 3D object that can be rotated around its vertical axis, simulating a clay modeling turntable. Its introduction left every Illustrator user cheering.
If you have ever used Illustrator to craft a vector illustration—from logo design to character animation—it’s understandable why the excitement surrounds Turntable. “The idea for Turntable originated from a consistent theme we heard directly from customers around the time and effort required to manually redraw characters and illustrations from multiple angles, often taking hours,” says Deepa Subramaniam, Adobe’s Vice President of Product Marketing for Creative Professionals. It perfectly exemplifies how generative AI can assist human creators in saving remarkable amounts of time without sacrificing their artistic vision.
Understanding Turntable’s appeal requires knowing why modifying a 2D illustration traditionally poses challenges. Drawing something complex with a stylus in Photoshop can be quick, akin to sketching on paper. However, Photoshop limits zoom capabilities, leading to pixelation and uneven curves. In contrast, Illustrator allows for infinite zoom without resolution loss, but achieving complex images through mathematical vectors is time-consuming. The task of reshaping vectors to illustrate different perspectives of a character becomes a laborious endeavor.
This is precisely why users are enthusiastic about Turntable, a generative AI technology within Adobe’s Creative Cloud, which interprets a collection of lines and shapes—say, an astronaut—and rotates it 360 degrees to display its sides or back without requiring a complete redraw, all while retaining its infinitely zoomable vector nature.
When a flat vector is fed into this engine, it doesn’t merely stretch the image. It intelligently perceives the mathematical anchors and curves, recalculating the coordinates to reveal the hidden aspects of the design. The response from the industry was a mixture of shock, excitement, and skepticism as users witnessed an algorithm accurately deduce unseen geometry from a flat drawing.
As noted team at CreativePro Network, this tool transforms what was once a long, drawn-out process into a much more efficient one. “Animation teams can swiftly create character turnarounds for pitch decks, game designers can generate 360-degree assets for concept art, and social media teams can create GIFs and micro-animations in mere seconds, all within Illustrator,” Subramaniam explains.
The integration of Adobe’s ecosystem amplifies this workflow, directly linking rotating vector assets to animation pipelines. As Subramaniam puts it, “With a seamless handoff to tools like After Effects, teams can transition from design to motion without interrupting their flow.” This setup means that a character spun around in Illustrator can easily be transferred into a motion graphics sequence.
Processing is handled entirely in Adobe’s cloud, utilizing monthly generative credits bundled into paid Creative Cloud subscriptions at a cost of 20 credits per generation. However, the initial rollout was rocky, with early adopters facing numerous workflow limitations during the public beta phase.
Like many new features, Turntable necessitated a high degree of precision from users. To prevent the algorithm from mishandling geometry during rotations, users were required to meticulously group their layers in Illustrator. This process was akin to securing pieces of a ship to withstand a storm; loose anchor points would lead to chaos.
Early testers on Reddit cautioned that users had to adhere to best practices for optimal outcomes. Exporting results was also problematic, forcing users into convoluted workarounds to save individual frames as usable files.
However, Subramaniam claims these issues have been resolved since the tool’s beta testing phase ended. According to the Adobe Community Release Notes, users no longer need to group objects before applying the effect. It also eliminated the previous limitations on rotation degrees, allowing for full 360-degree orbits in precise 15-degree increments. Additionally, substantial export inefficiencies have been rectified, enabling users to deploy a single command to immediately generate character reference sheets and native GIFs directly from Illustrator’s Contextual Taskbar.
These advancements symbolize a significant evolution for commercial artists, as they serve as efficient co-pilots that eliminate hours of tedious work. Moreover, the tool operates swiftly, running on Adobe’s servers. Each Turntable operation costs 20 AI-processing credits, and users can purchase additional credits through various tiers of their Adobe Creative Cloud subscription.
While the advantages are compelling, there exists a chilling reality about the trajectory of this technology. Some creatives worry that generative AI will one day render Turntable—and possibly Adobe Illustrator itself—obsolete. The future may hold a landscape where visual creation no longer requires mapping mathematical vectors or coaxing algorithms; instead, anyone could command a machine to manifest any concept with absolute precision, negating the need for human artistry.
This existential reality has led some artists to fundamentally reject such tools, regardless of the time savings. For them, the issue transcends efficiency; it’s about the diminishing time available for creative expression after investing years in honing their skills as illustrators and designers.
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