Hello, I am considering getting Toonboom Harmony 14 (soon to be 15) premium. But I have a question about performance.
The computer is a mid 2017 MacBook pro 15 inch with touch bar OS Sierra, processor 3.1 Ghz Intel Core 7 and 16 Ram memory which seem to meet the system requirements, however, I have a question about the graphics card, which is an Intel HD graphics 630 1536MB, (this is not listed on the Harmony 14 requirements page, I am wondering how the computer will perform with Harmony 14 premium.
Toon Boom graciously offers a free 21 day trial. So rather than rely on the judgement of someone else, why not test the performance yourself? Harmony 14 is available right now to test drive! The link to the trial is at the bottom of the system requirements page you were browsing.
Intel graphic cards are low-end cards, also a recent Windows update
damaged the OpenGL capabilities of the Intel cards. Clean the registry
using a registry cleaner tool and re-install the graphic card driver.
On Windows you will have a better experience using the software if
you get an NVidia graphic card in the mid to high-end range.
Intel HD graphics are, in one word, pretty atrocious for serious graphics and animation work. In particular for OpenGL performance. On Macs the situation is a tad better compared to Windows machines, but still pretty meager.
Running Harmony Premium on a small 15" notebook is never going to be fun to work on anyway. In your case, the screen is a retina 2880x1800 pixels screen, which further exacerbates performance problems, because Intel HD chips, while capable to drive the 2d side of things, running OpenGL in that resolution is a pretty limiting factor.
A Mac like yours is sub-optimal for most design and animation work - sorry. Good for on the road edits, though.
Having said this, download the trial, and test it for yourself. It might work for you well enough.
@hvanderwegen, @rkriz, and @triplelindy thank you for your replies and advice. The tech details are particularly helpful. I have been out of animating for several years now, I had a feeling the graphics card was going to cause some issues, but except for monitor size being a limiting factor, I was thinking the screen/pixels would be alright. Definitely food for thought.