How Does the Pivot Painter Nodes Work?

I been reading into the how to use this thing, I watched these videos and all they tell me is how to use the script in Max.

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/PivotPainterTool.html

But what I want to know is the data pulled from the vertex color and the how does the material shader work if it does indeed work from the Vertex Color.

The reason I ask is I want to use the vertex paint tool in Maya.