There are numerous resources for Art Of Illusion available on the web:
The AOI Manual
Written by Julian MacDonald, this up-to-date and impressively-illustrated document covers AOI thoroughly from getting started to expert features and techniques. The download is 11 Megabytes, and comes in two forms:
Helpset Integrates directly into this help system. The AOI plugin manager, SPManager, can download and install it automatically from the "AOIManual" repository, or if you wish, you can
.
Alternatively, you can
from the AOIManual repository and install it manually.
ZIP file All the files packaged into a ZIP archive. You can
and unpack it manually to any location you wish.
You can also read the manual online, if you don't wish to download the entire document.
There are also a number of useful online resources where you can ask for help in one way or another:
AOI Wiki A searchable and editable knowledgebase on the web. Search for tips and existing answers to previously asked questions.
Friendly Skies forum An online forum. Questions posted here usually get a response from one of the active AOI community. This is also a great place to discuss all things AOI (and many things less related) with others.
SourceForge forum
The online forum for the ArtOfIllusion project, which is hosted on SourceForge. Sadly, this forum does not display well in this help viewer, but feel free to go there in your web browser:
http://sourceforge.net/forum/?group_id=15063 The General Discussion forum is the most active, but all the other forums are used, so you should choose the one that best suits your needs/interest.
While many of the AOI community frequent both the FriendlySkies (above) and the SourceForge forums, the main developer of AOI, Peter Eastman, participates in the SourceForge forums only, so if you need to contact Peter, you will need to come here to do it. Because the SourceForge interface is more basic, and because the more technical questions for Peter need to be asked here, many AOI users regard these forums as the 'geek hangout'. However, everyone is welcome, and the answers to your questions are just as friendly as on any other forum. And besides, Peter is adamant that he will never qualify as a geek...
(http://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=3644978)
Live Help (Chat, IRC=#aoi)
Instant Message Forum (ie Chat Room) dedicated to AOI. Meet other users in real-time, ask questions, discuss ideas, and be involved. Because of time-zone differences, you will typically meet fewer people there at any point in time than you will find in the forums, but you will find that a fair number of the AOI community do pop in, when the time-zone suits.
You can easily connect to the #aoi chat room by selecting Live Help from the Help menu. To begin with, just choose a reasonably unique string for your name and leave the password blank. Later, if you find you are using Live Help regularly enough, you can register your own chat name (handle) and set a password on it, so that you guarantee that no one else can use your id.