Retain Mesh Color

Hi all,

Trying to figure out how to bake a mesh with color into the mesh as one joined mesh. The surface I am working with is broken up into 1200 faceted faces, and I did manage to bake a color into each mesh face with the bake geometry from the human set, but when these are joined they become one color. I wanted to be able to not have such a huge file with so many individual faces. Attaching the image of the mesh and the basic definition which is three components and one color gradient component. Any help would be appreciated!