Weapons:
1. Don't need to unless you want to reference the hand positions otherwise weapons can be animated completely on their own.
2. You don't need to add a camera but it helps to see where things are and how they will look in game. Use the Panda Exporter. It exports in world coordinates, meaning everything is offset from 0,0,0 in max.
This is what I do. Set system unit scale to inches. Setup a free camera with an FOV 58 and position it at 0,0,0. Align objects and viewports. Refer pic below.
3. For the files and directory structure, look in gamecoreguns to see what is need and where things go. - Sorry can't explain all right now. Briefly you need 2 xfiles and textures. HUD.x this is the animated player weapon. VWEAP.x is a static model that will be used my ai characters. oh and the gunspec.txt most important, its like the fpe.
4. Havent looked at it.
Characters:
1. Yes
2. Entity bank for character model and textures. I suggest creating a folder structure that is similiar to the ones in there. eg.scifi,ww2
Sounds, look audiobankvoices.
Textures:
Technically, most of the textures can go anywhere you like since it is referenced by path in the fpe file. But strongly suggest the way the default structure is laid out, if you are building a game or plan to give out stuff.
Typically, Character and gun textures go with the model files in their respective folders. Other entities like props, the mesh goes in the meshbank and textures in texurebank. Same with segments. This is ideal as you would probably have tons of them compared to characters and weapons.
good luck. In a bit of a rush at the moment. Keep asking if you need more info and I'll try to answer where possible
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