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or they have a billion poly bear model that they're baking their normal/ao/light maps out of. Which I guess is possible.

That's actually exactly what they did :V They are making high poly sculpts that are tens of thousands of polys to get those maps (light maps, normal maps, ao bakes, etc).

In TF2, you'll never need to sculpt unless it's for a hair-ish item. Honestly, I don't see the point in using a normal map at all with a badge. It's so small that the normal map would be immaterial.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/BlenderTutorialCommunity/discussions/4/864980734650428659/#c864980734676815207

Hm... I don't know if this is possible to do with jiggle bones. That said, it might be. I don't think I have sufficient experience with jigglebones to outright tell you it's impossible. Perhaps you could do it with 2 jigglebones (one attached to the model above the player and 1 to actually jiggle it).

1) This is your normal mask. It is applied to both red/blu team (shared). Normal maps fake detail by creating shadows on your model even if the faces are actually flat. You can read more about normal maps here: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Normal_Map

2) This is a small texture file that acts as a mask (hence "mask") for the brightness and rim brightness of the model (phong/rim shading, respectively). In this texture, you will need to create an alpha channel that is purely greyscale. The parts that are white will be fully bright according to your phong settings, and the parts that are black will not be bright. You can read more about phong shading here: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Phong_materials

3) This is a texture that corresponds to your self-illuminated parts. Same deal as number 2 above. Self-illuminated parts of your model will glow in the dark. If you don't want your entire model to glow in the dark, you can specify which parts of the texture will glow by creating a texture with an alpha channel with black = no glow and white = glow. Read more about self-illumination here: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/$selfillum

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=18003290&postcount=2

I honestly don't know. Valve is very unpredictable.

It depends. There isn't really a set amount of time. Valve can take things almost immediately or they can wait a few months. A friend of mine sent in a model a year ago in TF2 and it was put in the game only just a few weeks ago... I also had a friend who made a halloween item the day before the update which got in.

So there really isn't any set answer.

This is a problem with your $illumposition which is a custom QC command. If you're able to use the Source SDK, open your model with the SDK and check where the illumposition is. More than likely it is embedded in the character (so the lighting origin thinks it's completely black).

You can change this easily with the $illumposition command: In the importer in-game, click the "QC" button to open up the qc. Check to see if there is an $illumposition line in there. If not, add one like the following:

(Change the numbers if you need to. You can check where the illumposition is using the SDK).

Read more about $illumposition on the VDC: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/$illumposition

Haha, welcome to rigging! It's pretty much a pain in the ass process. You just have to figure out how to rig what bones to what parts of the model to get it to look right. There aren't really any ways of making it easier; however, you could try using weight paint mode to assign bones to faces a little more quickly.

One other thing you could do if you're feeling ambitious is to import a character animation (so that your character isn't in the ref pose) in order to see how your model will look like before compiling.

I assume you mean like exporting UV layouts:

In the UV screen click "UVs" > "Export UV Layout" > save as a .png