Remove Image Plate at Render Time

This caught me out when I first started using Image Plates in Unreal, thankfully the solution is simple.

This is shot ‘ts_010_0090’ from my short film, initially the renders were ‘enhanced playblasts’ but when the time came to start to render the soldiers with clean alphas I needed to hide the image plate.

The solution is to have the image plate hidden at ‘Game Time’ which for us is render time. Find the ‘Render Texture’ component on the camera and in the details panel, search for ‘Hidden in Game’. You can check this is working by hitting the ‘G’ when in the viewport and that will only show the assets that will be seen by the engine during the render.