There IS magic/fanciness in retrieving the connection data for a deformer that sets things up for you - the post I've linked here detangles it enough to work with. He's posting a question, but his question contains my answer: neato. I found ways around my initial question, using the great advice here and in other threads, that were successful in getting results, but the first post in the linked thread contains what I was actually "looking for" in this thread - I just didn't know how to properly phrase the question, and although most of this was in Matthew's answer (thank you!), the "how to actually retrieve the information" in python is at the link, which is super valuable.
http://groups.google.com/group/python_inside_maya/browse_thread/thread/5c68518d0d95a7e4?hl=en --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Yours, Maya-Python Club Team. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
