Cnaging how skins work on models via notepad help needed

Cnaging how skins work on models via notepad help needed

I'm aware that you can change how the kins are on a model using wordpad. I just want to know how you'd transfer such skin anims as the watery effect on a water elemental or making a certain skin darker or more trasnparent etc.

Transparent: Materials, change texture type to... Addiative I think
Darker: Vertex colour, which I've lost somewhere deep in the mdl
Animated Textures: Bah, been too long since I last touched these...

that helps a bit. Thanks. If you can remember please respond..