here's that bit of the changelog in 14w25a, for anyone who is wondering.
- Model format improvements[1]
- New tag "textures" to specify the textures used by the model.
- Removed the directional attribute from the uv definition and replaced it with explicit texture references
- "textureFacing" renamed to "texture", it is prepended with the hash symbol (#)
- "useAmbientOcclusion" renamed to "ambientocclusion"
- "rotateVariantTextures" renamed to "UV lock"
- "cull" renamed to "cullface", specifies the opposite of which neighboring face causes culling to occur
- Example: if you have an east-facing face but want it to be culled along a different axis (let's say Z), you would specify "cullface": "north" or "cullface": "south".
- Rotation made more verbose, it is now more clear that it can only occur on a single axis
- Example, the rotation for one of the two faces of the "cross" model is now: "rotation": { "origin": [ 8, 8, 8 ], "axis": "y", "angle": 45, "rescale": true },
- The folder models/blocks/meshes was removed and model files are now stored in models/blocks.
- The folder blockstates was added and stores the model selection files previously found in models/blocks.
- Rendering
- Items
- All items are models, some are still generated from item icons
- Resource packs can make models for all items
- Blocks
- Rewrote how blocks are rendered
- Rewrote how block data is handled
- Items