It will be. I'm part-way through the upgrade.

This is not supported at all.

You can use that panel to configure a bulk export of all animations in the .blend file.

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Blender_Source_Tools_Help#Armature_properties

That is also what I meant.

Select the armature being animated and look at its properties in the Source Engine Exportables panel.

You can't, unless you want to hand-edit it. You need to import a VTA which already matches.

That object is the result of an error message when you imported the model. It's telling you which VTA vertices couldn't be mapped to vertices on the reference mesh.

If nothing could be mapped at all, that means that the original VTA you imported doesn't match the original SMD you imported.

Well do those files exist?

There's a corrupt character in your QC file. I don't see anything wrong with the uploaded text, but the website may have corrected the problem.

That is precisely what you need to do. Just adding a few on the vertical sections will improve lighting nicely.