First let's make a smoke text with a simple canonical font face. Go to [Procedural Text Effects] / [Dirt and Pollution] and select the effect showed below.

Configure the effect to draw an "A" with Arial font in big size. You will get something like this:

It's a nice result. With thin font faces usually the smoke effect already generates some good fading. Anyway, you could like to have a overall looking with a stronger fading. Now I give you some suggestions about font faces that can generate some more fading with no extra effort.

For each smoke text showed below, I tell you the used font, so you can get it by yourself without looking for a suitable face in the huge Picture to People font list.

Used font: JFWildWood. Gives you a more visible difuse fading.

Used font: Flame. Generates some small smoke columns at the letters top.

Used font: Fade to Gray. Gives a smooth fading down.

Used font: Amped for Evil. The result has a nice strong fading up.

Depending on the font you choose, the fading can even destroy the typography, so the text would be unreadable. You can get much more impressive and flying fading shapes by using similar techniques to the explained in the tutorial Drawing a fading smoke column.

[ Posted by Leonardo]

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