I'm not 100% sure since I don't do animations. The sourceSDK no longer works, so I'm not sure if Valve updates it anymore with the animations for TF2 classes... You can try decompiling the animations manually from the TF2 VPK. Open up the tf2_misc_dir.vpk file using GCFscape and extract the demoman .mdl files (and the associated files). There should be a "demo_animations.mdl" file for you to decompile. When that is decompiled, you can import the resulting animation smds into blender.

That's all I know, though... I can't really help too much more. I do know that you can use the source filmmaker to export animations. Try looking into that.

Does your mouse have a middle mouse button?

Yup. Steampipe changed the folder locations. The new location will be here:

C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\SourceSDK\bin\ep1\bin

Well it depends on what you are doing. Let's assume you are gonna do everything low-poly (i.e. no sculpting involved). You would first make the actual model, then you would unwrap it, then you would bake the AO, then you would bring the bake into photoshop and start texturing.

The downside to low-poly modeling is the texturing process is a lot more involved since the details are done by actually painting on everything. But the upside is that you don't have to sculpt. When you finish creating the texture, you can make a normal map out of it using the nVidia normal map plugin. Then bring everything back into blender to preview how it looks.

Make sure the normals are facing outward. Go into texture mode. Is it invisible looking/see-through? If so, recalculate your normals (from edit mode > select the faces that are flipped and recalculate normals).

Flexes are out of my scope since I don't use them, but see if you can ask one of the authors of this guide: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=170877216

Shape keys would be the way to go, but it's odd that they show up in hlmv but do nothing.

It automatically triangulates your model when you export to .smd (or if you don't export to .smd, the game automatically triangulates your model). The reason for this is that 3 points can only ever make a flat surface whereas 4 can make 2 flat surfaces.

Example:
http://i.imgur.com/BSCQ9PB.png
http://i.imgur.com/lCLn9w2.png

I don't think transparency is allowed in Dota 2. As far as I can tell, we don't have access to the vmt settings which would allow us to enable transparency. This may have changed, though (if you see an item that uses transparency, let me know... I'll take a look at it).

As for the payments: When an item is shipped, you'll be able to enter your payment information through steam. It works via direct deposit. Every month you'll get paid whatever you made the previous month (so let's say you make $500 in January, you'll get the money at the end of Febuary).

Hm.. I thought that might happen. The tf2 compiler probably has the cdmaterials path set up to be something other than where your current materials are located. Open up the .vmt file and check to see where the filepath is. Put your materials in that folder. It should be something like models/workshop/player/items/engineer/

I don't have SFM installed on this computer, but as far as I know you just copy/paste the models and materials folders from that zipped file into the appropriate Source Filmmaker folder. Then it should show up.