SirSavary

I am attempting to port a mod from 1.8.9 to to 1.11.2. While poking through the model JSON for the blocks in the mod, I've noticed that the textures are not explicitly defined (in the JSON). Instead, the JSON looks like this: { "textures": { "particle": "#primary" } } The mod author also made use of other "variables", like #secondary and #tertiary. In the code, there are strings that match up to these properties (the mod simply re-uses Vanilla textures) but I can't quite figure out where the two connect. At no point in the code is there any sort of binding of textures, so I'm not entirely sure how it's even working. My question is, how can I bind a value to a "variable" in the model JSON?

I'm a fairly experienced Java programmer and I'd like to create a functioning Spigot 1.8 with Forge installed (like Cauldron but updated for 1.. I'm wondering if there is an easy way to do this, such as extracting the Forge server files into the Spigot jar, or if I will have to modify the source manually. Just wondering before I invest a ton of time into this.