How can I control where smoke and fire are emitted from? How can I control which part of the object the fire/smoke is emitted from so instead of it coming from the corners it is emitted from the top side like a normal log on fire.


Also I can't see the faces of the object even though I am out of edit and wire frame mode can someone please explain that as well.
You can assign the smoke and fire to come out of just a vertex group.

Select the vertices you want the fire and smoke to come out of, and create a vertex group and assign the vertices to it:



Then go to Smoke Flow advanced and use the vertex group to determine where the fire and smoke will come out of.





Note: Every time you make any changes to the smoke/fire simulation you need to press Alt+A to update the simulation cache.

To set up the materials and actually render your smoke in cycles watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSiV5gg_lCs