too much polygons in one scene = ray tracing gives up in rendering

As a second follow up, would you mind testing briefly with the Pathtracer in Movie Render Queue? The viewport pathtracer didn’t seem to exhibit the same issue.

I wouldn’t say I’ve replicated the issue you have, but I did see skeletal mesh instances missing entirely in the MRQ output with Pathtracing. That would causing missing shadows as the geometry is missing from the point of view of the lights.

Best regards,

Chris