Hopefully it gets throughSomeone on the forge IRC channel mentioned that a new patch for Forge 1.8 will contain the notion of 'custom baked models'. According to the people there I will be able to make my shield block work again (the shield block in my mod can mimic any other block in Minecraft so it needs to be able to use the texture from another block). So at least that part will be covered and maybe that custom baked model will allow for more things to do here.
Anyway, it is not in forge yet. It is a patch thas has been submitted I believe.