By default there are a bunch of menu scenes which your game will use when loading the menu. If you are playing in VR (or have 2D menus disabled when playing on PC) your menu will appear as a 3D map scene where you can spin the camera around:



But if you are playing on PC (and have 2D menus enabled) then you will instead see a 2D menu with a panning animation in the background of the same menu scene:



There is also a setting in the "Pause menu -> gameplay -> main menu options" to force the game to use the 3D menu instead of the 2D one if you prefer.


During some special events, like Halloween, Christmas, etc (or the release of a new official map) the main menu scene might change to only show a specific set of menus.
E.g. during Halloween it will only show a selection of Halloween themed menu scenes.



If you don't want these temporary event menu scenes, you can disable them in the "Pause menu -> gameplay -> main menu options" menu.


You can customize the list of available main menu scenes (each time you open the menu one of these is loaded at random) in the "Pause menu -> gameplay -> main menu options" menu. Simply enable/disable the checkbox for each menu scene to choose which ones you want the game to choose from.



This list will show all of the official "built-in" menu scenes, as well as any menus you have downloaded from the Steam Workshop.

You can find custom main menu scenes uploaded by other players in the "main menu scene" category on the Steam Workshop:

To add your own main menu scene, open the Modding Manager from the pause menu and change the category to "Main menu scene", then click "add new":



From this menu you can customize various options:

• Player scale - change how large the player and menu are displayed when viewing the menu as a 3D scene. E.g. if you set this to 2x then you will appear twice as large as a normal player.
  
• Tags - Just like all other mod types, you can set custom tags for use on the Steam Workshop.
  
• Thumbnail - Choose an image thumbnail for this menu scene.
  
• Choose spawn point - use this option to set the menu spawn point (explained in the next step).
  
• Remove distant props - Enable this option if you want to save this menu scene as a smaller map file without the full map included. E.g. if your map is large, then you probably don't want to load the entire map every time you open the main menu. You can enable this option and set a custom distance where all props/track beyond this distance will be removed from the menu save file.
  NOTE: Make sure to set the menu spawn point AFTER changing this setting otherwise it will not have an effect.

To set the menu spawn point use the "Choose spawn point" button. This will enable a mode where you can position yourself on your map somewhere and preview how the menu will look. Click your mouse to save this spawn location.
When you click to save, this is when the save file for your menu scene is created. If you want to include moving trains in your menu then make sure they are in the correct position when you click to capture the spawn point.



If you just want to make a simple menu scene with no special pan animation then this is all the steps you need to do. You can save the map now and it will show up in the list of available menus (in the menu select list shown earlier).

But if you want to add a custom panning animation when viewing the menu in 2D (on PC only) then you can click the "2D menu options" button to open a new menu:



From here you can customize lots of options:

• Animation type - choose between various animation types, like making the camera rotate in one place, or pan from one point to another. Or simply stay still.
  
• Depth of field - Enable/disable a depth of field effect (making the background blurry) when viewing the menu. You can also change how far away this effect is visible.
  
• Camera field of view - Change how wide/narrow the camera FOV is when viewing this menu.
  
• Panning time - Set how long it will take for the camera to pan from the start position to the end position in seconds. E.g. if you set this to "10" it will take 10 seconds to complete the panning animation.
  
• Start/End position - Use these buttons to set the start and end of the pan. This will enable a capture mode where you will need to position your player view on your map to the location you want to capture. Both the position and rotation of the camera is captured when you do this, but not the map save file or train positions (this is saved when you set the spawn point in the previous menu).
  
• Position/Rotation - toggle whether the panning animation includes position, rotation or both. E.g. if you disable rotation, the camera will just pan from the start position to the end position and will not rotate. but if you disable position it will rotate from the camera rotation at the start point to the end point without the camera moving.

You can click the "test menu (2D)" button at the top of the menu to preview the animation:
(this example uses both position and rotation for its panning animation)