i managed to fix the look poses for the hunting rifle so it doesn't twist your wrist when looking up or down, and this in itself works fine with no problems.

but i noticed another issue with the hunting rifle and that's the first frame of the idle animation has the left arm in a different position, so in-game, every so often, it twitches because of that one frame.

it was an easy fix to get the arm in the correct position, but now this happens:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbOYl5nKCPg

I'm using the Starter Kit files so I didn't decompile the model with Crowbar, and I'm recompiling it using the compiler batch file also included with the Starter Kit

I'm editing the animations using Blender and exporting them with the Source Engine .smd/.dmx plugin

i've tried:

• $includemodel trick (which doesn't work because the hunting rifle, being a direct port from l4d1, gets its animations from a .ani file that i can't tell it not to use)
  
• snap rotate 0 90 0 or just 90 (the former which makes the .qc not even compile, the latter which only ends up turning the model horizontally and making the issue worse)
  
• rotating the actual animation itself 90 degrees to the left which fixes the camera turning but then the model is 90 degrees to the left when idling

this only happens with the idle animation, the only animation i edited, like the video shows. is it something with blender or how the model is compiled altogether or something else?

EDIT: for future reference and anyone who may come across this thread: here are the exact steps i take to recreate the fix for this issue in blender:

-select the camera bone (not the parent constraint, if you select the parent constraint (you can see the name at the bottom of the viewport) then just right click the camera bone again until you don't see "parent_constraint" after the name)
-the camera bone is usually the backmost/highest bone behind the weapon/arms
-in the bottom left click "view" and "back" (if you don't see the "back" option, click the other "view" button, there's 2), this sets the camera to exactly behind the model for a better view
-click the rotate button on the left and move the bone slightly, then left click to confirm (don't worry about accuracy at the moment, we're just trying to get a menu to pop up)
-a new control panel pops up in the bottom left, reset any coordinates to 0d (0 degrees)
-constraint the Y axis (check the box next to the Y axis only)
-in the Y axis text box, type 90d
-press I on your keyboard (as in Insert Keyframe) and select "whole character (selected bones only)"
-go to the bottom left where you see a little clock & click it
-select "dope sheet"
-scroll down until you see the camera bone & camera bone parent constraint
-delete any keyframes after the 1st one (usually there's only 1 other at the end of the animation but just in-case delete all of them) by right clicking on the keyframe and pressing "delete" on your keyboard
-export