Guide on adding a new model, animation, and creature to HoMMV

Good evening!
I have a set of textures, an FBX model, and an SMD file for it. It seems that the texture mapping is done through the SMD file because the exported FBX doesn't have any materials. But that's just the first issue. The main question is: is there a way to remove the skeleton from the model in Maya 2009? Because when I delete the skeleton, the model disappears (by the way, the model's size and position also depend on the skeleton), and if I leave the skeleton, the editor complains about more than two skeletons in the model during export... Unfortunately, I don't have 3ds Max, and I don't want to buy it either.