what noren said, i'd just morph this flat, using the animation options in your application, make 1 "hex" object probably use the array option in the application and "bake that down to a normals" map, overlay it on your completed normals map as a new layer overlaying the old with the new hex & rebaking what you need to…
I'd suggest just hand painting out the issues you're having. Once you let go of the idea that a bake has to be "perfect" your workflow decreases big time. So the ears are kinda funky? just paint 127 127 255 (numeric value of color) flat blue over them to fix it. If you want you can take a black and white image of fur and…
So both the LP and HP are flat on these areas? If so I'd say your LPs vertex normals aren't all pointing in the same direction. This produces these gradients to counter the slightly round appearance of the LP.
dont remember how i came across this.. but one crazy idea that is pretty damned cool... http://66.70.170.53/Ryan/nrmphoto/nrmphoto.html and the main page with some more neat stuff.. http://www.zarria.net/