Animating color versus animation tint

Instead of varying tint (a native transformation), LiveMotion varies the actual color of the object or layer. While this approach can yield more accurate results and allows you to apply color changes on just certain layers (Macromedia Flash tint applies the effect to the entire object), it requires LiveMotion to generate new artwork on every frame where the color changes, increasing the export file size. As a result, you should be judicious in animating color transformations, especially on artwork that generates a bitmap when exported to SWF.

If file size is a concern, consider making your shape a mask and then animate the color of a geometric object beneath the mask. A new geometric object is created on every frame, but it will be about 35 bytes (most likely smaller than a new copy of your shape). You can't use vector artwork as a mask if you import it, but you can usually use the shape as a mask if you paste it instead. Converting the shape to a single color without a stroke before pasting also helps.

Note that you can also change the native tint attribute through scripting. See the Adobe LiveMotion 2.0 Scripting Guide.