It's not that nightmarish :P

I haven't made one because I don't want people wasting their time making weapons when they surely won't be accepted.

Hm. Not sure what the problem could be. You are using .tgas, right?

A normal map could work too. There are various ways of doing it. I myself would just use two textures since you can make the goggle texture much smaller (to conserve memory) since it's only 1 shade of color + shiny. And with 2 textures you can also overlap UVs.

Select your model and go to the material tab. Click "New". You should now get a bigger list. To add a second material, click the "+" sign to the right and then click "New" again. (You can rename these materials if you want).

Now go into edit mode. Deselect any vertices. Now select only the vertices that belong to the hat. In the panel to the right, select the first material and click "Assign". Now deselect the hat and select only the goggles. Select the second material and click "Assign". Now export your model as usual and enter the TF2 importer. You will now see settings for 2 materials.

You could always use 2 textures. One for the glass and one for the rest of the mask. The difference is that now you'll actually have to assign 2 different materials from within blender so that the importer recognizes that the model requires 2 materials. Then just adjust the glass material to be really shiny (the other advantage is that you wouldn't even need a phong mask for it).

I'll be out mostly for today. Studying for a biochem final exam! Tomorrow I'll be free, so if you need any further help I could possibly be of more use then. Maybe I could even use *gasp* the chatroom!

In your base texture, create an alpha channel with the parts that you want to be dull = black and the parts that you want shiny = white. Now save this image as a 32-bit .tga file (IMPORTANT That it's not 24-bit!). In the TF2 importer, make sure to check the box that says "Base map alpha phong mask". It should now work.

Eh... I've never really used it because I would need to monitor it constantly. With my work schedule, it would be impossible.

Select the bone rig > go to the Object Data panel > navigate to the Display subheading and click "Names".

1) I think it's fair game if several people are working on it at once.

2) Old ideas are perfectly fine imo to revive! I think if it hasn't been put into the game in a few years, chances are a better remake might give it the necessary boost to get it in-game.

But as I mentioned, there isn't any rule in the workshop concerning copyrights of ideas, so really anyone can "copy" someone's idea (granted it's not just a re-upload of an exact model or something actually 'illegal'). Most of it comes down to respect and how nice people are about things.

Lastly, looking at the quality of items you pumped out in the past week, I'd say there is no doubt you will be a successful contributor. Keep submitting good stuff and eventually you'll gain Valve's attention! Good luck this winter :) I really think that pyro firewood backpack will ship.

I literally have never done this before! >:( Maybe you could ask Napy (the guy who wrote the guide). Sorry!