I have been away from modding since 1.4 and i noticed that there is a new texture handler so i was wondering if there was a way to do texture overlays or do i need to create a custom texture handler?

http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1722368-15-icons-and-block-textures/

 

Sums up the changes to Item's and Block's texture handling.

All sprite sheets are gone.

For entity's, GUI's and Overlays etc. it's more or less like earlier.

thanks for the help however i think you misunderstood what i was saying i meant like overlaying 2 or more textures on a single item sort of like layers in photoshop

The vanilla grass block does it, I havent understood the code yet, but it is in a giant block of code in renderStandardBlockWithAmbientOcclusion in renderblocks.  search for fancygrass  conditions are met when the grass block is rendered and it rendered the side grass over the dirt block to color it based on the biome.

Well as I said for the texture changes with 1.5 see the link, the rest is mostly the same.

Since you indicated that you had been away since 1.4. 

Rendering of overlays is unchanged I believe, so if you knew it inn 1.4 you know it now. Old tutorials still work if there are any.

 

oh, do a search for "overlay" on these boards!

I believe you should find the old thread where reika and the others where talking about how to implement it

I bet that will be a good read for ya ^^