Advanced Texture Problem

[enzo22]

Ok, I'm trying to make a top-hat for Ganondorf, so I decided to replace Ganon's "headpiece" (polygon11) with Luigi's hat, and then afterward vertex-edit the hat to make it look like a top-hat.  After a series of hexing problems, I finally got the verticies of Luigi's hat to replace Ganon's headpiece.  So now it looks like this:

So I figured I could just edit Ganon's texture files and fill in some of the transparent places to make the hat a solid color and actually look like a hat.  I tried that but was left with a still incomplete hat:

So now, I figured if I get rid of his cape and replace that texture with Luigi's texture with that hat in it, maybe if I direct the model to get the texture for the headpiece from that cape position, it would take what it needs for the hat and I could just edit that.  I knew it wasn't going to be that easy.
Any advice or is this just not even possible (at least the way I'm doing it)?

[dingo]

Your problem is this.....you can't do that. You have to do a lot of model rebuilding in 3DS for this to even be possible.

[enzo22]

ok thanks.  any other alternatives?

[dingo]

PSA with a Kirby hat attached to his head at all times. Other then that nothing.