RenderTexture shading hidden elements

Hi,

using a RenderTexture with a shader, I wonder, what would be best practice to render elements only with the sprite child of the shader output. Currently, I always have the elements in the shader sprite and as childs of a Layer, which will be rendered also.
Making that Layer visible(false) will not allow to use the elements in the shader, I guess as there is no input pixel for the Frag Shader, at least there is no output anymore then.

Maybe some1 has a good starting point for further reading?

Best