Illustrator's Turntable Trick Only Works if You Still Redraw the Result

Illustrator 2026, version 30.0, ships Turntable, taking a flat 2D vector illustration and generating up to 74 editable views as if you had rotated the object around its vertical axis, using generative AI to infer what the back and sides of a character, product or object might look like from the front you actually drew.

The demo version of this is impressive, feed in a character and slide through dozens of consistent looking angles without redrawing a single line. The honest version is that generated angles are a guess, and a confident looking guess is more dangerous than an obviously rough one, because it is tempting to ship the first plausible result rather than checking whether the proportions actually hold up from the side you needed.

We would treat Turntable the same way we treat any generative starting point in a paid project: brilliant for getting from nothing to a rough set of options fast, and next to useless as a final asset without a designer actually redrawing or correcting the angles that matter for the final use. The 74 generated views are not 74 finished illustrations. They are 74 first drafts, and the job of deciding which ones are worth keeping has not gone anywhere.