BLENDER: Rendering and creating the icon

Create the icon file
Here we go through how to create the icon.png file.

Preface
This is going to be rather long and it will introduce you to many new things in Blender. It is recommended that you watch the Youtube videos at the bottom of the page to get the feel of flow because it may be easier to see and learn in video format. The videos will not learn how the exact steps for the Planet Coaster icon, but at least you will learn about camera and rendering process.

About the icon
In Planet Coaster the icon is the graphic representation of the objects on the menu window. The icons have transparent background. I (Helena) do not know the recommended size in pixels so we are going to use 500x500 pixels as base. Thememaker's Toolkit will size it to the needed size.

How to create the motif the quick and ugly way
The most basic way could be to turn off the grid from the Properties panel (N) zoom and pane so that the object fill your screen in nice way and hit the Print Screen key on your keyboard and then paste the thing into your desired photo editor software and crop it, delete the background, save as transparent png. But it is kind of the ugly way to do so. It will work for the trial objects. But there are better ways to show your object.

How to create the motif the pretty way
Start with save your project so far. Save again, giving the save a new name, for example Object Render.

In the Outliner box click on the Eye and the Camera for hitcheckbox and all the LOD's with exception for L0. You may also delete them if you saved to a new file.

On the top of the screen in the drop down menu the default item is usually Blender Render. Click on it and choose Cycles Render. This produces a better render result.

Apply your texture file
Click on the L0 object and make sure it is selected. Click on the Material tab (orange ball).

Under the Surface in same panel, press the Use Nodes button.

On the drop down menu for Surface you click on it and choose Principled BSDF. It is a shader.

It will now show a list of different settings for that shader.

Beside the Base Color there are a color box, but do not click on that. Click on the tiny dot next to it. It will now bring up a box with lists of things you can apply. You look up Image Texture and click on that.

A new box below that will appear with a folder icon and Open text. Click on that. Look up your texture png file you made in earlier step.

Now you might think "nothing happens?". You need to click on the bottom bar, the round white smooth ball. This is the Solid view. (you might have another icon there, for example wireframe). Click on that one and it will bring up a list of views. Choose Material. Now you will see your texture!

Now the lazy might go and hide the grid and do screenshot.

But now we want to do the proper way!

READ MORE
Good tutorial videos on rendering in Blender

This video is a two part video where you will first learn how to model the cup and then render it

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