HoMM VII Haven Units – Haven faction units from the seventh installment of Heroes of Might and Magic.

I figured out the smoothing issue. It was resetting during the SMD import into Max, so I just had to redo it at that stage (there's a function in the mask for automatically adjusting smoothing groups; it works reasonably well, although not always perfectly, but the main thing is that it can be done in two clicks).
I'll think about how to optimize the process and try to write a tutorial.