Adding transparency to a gradient on a stroke in After Effects

Question

I'm in the process of creating a loader animation using After Effects.

Is there a way I can add a level of transparency to the tail? All the gradient effects I've tried using don't seem to allow you to change the transparency.

I'm currently using the four colour gradient effect and the stroke effect for the loader.

Answer 1

As with most things in After Effects there's a number of ways to do this. One is to just use the fill of your shape layer.

You can then open up the Shape -> Gradient Fill and next to colors it'll say Edit Gradient. The bottom of the Gradient is Color Markers, the top is Opacity Markers.

Hope this helps