radial gradient in text?

[patrick collins]

Hi everyone,

I am continuing along on my journey of figuring AI out! So, my next question is, if I make some text, and then go to Object > expand, and then apply a gradient– when I set it to radial, it does a radial gradient in each individual letter.. How can I make it so that there is one gradual gradient starting within a letter and then expand outwards?

I am basically trying to replicate what I do in photoshop which is:
1. make some text, give it a layer style with a stroke
2. select the pixels of the text
3. create a new layer
4. add a radial gradient over that selection
5. apply some noise to the gradient layer

This gives me an effect like this:
https://collinatorstudios.com/www/hello.png

How is the best way to create something like this in Illustrator? Thank you!

-patrick

[patrick collins]

Oh wait.. I see, by using the gradient tool and dragging that over the entire text area, that seems to make it do what I was wanting it to…

-patrick