I am trying to make a funtioning reddot sight ('Iron'sights view) and have managed to get a nice transparent greenish lens, and a decent looking dot.
At least in reasonable light... In darker conditions the red dot, instead of glowing, goes almost black.
See example of what I mean below.
http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff292/VonGrantoven/Reddot-sight.jpg
Obviously low light conditions is when you most want a glowing pipper, so this is less than ideal.

I followed the instructions on this http://www.fallout3nexus.com/articles/article.php?id=35 to the letter, but the results are as shown in the image.
What am I missing?

dunno. I think I need to see the guts, as I presume there are a few factors involved... Perhaps, is the alpha of the scope lens inbetween the dot an the camera? that is interfering with the full emissive value.

you could try editing emit multi to 2. look in in the block details for the NiMaterialProperty.

You need:
1: A glow map. White = fully bright, black = not glowing at all.

2: to set the Emissive Color Property to white (or red, or whatever).

3: To ensure that the Emissive Mult is >0.

The latter two are accessible in the object's NiMaterialProperty.

Thanks guys!
The Emit multi was set at 0. Changing it to 1 did the trick.
Funny that that was omitted from the tut.

Another question, while we are on the subject of cool glowing bits. How do you manage the 'blinking' lights that were so common in Zeta?

I presume they are animated.

How exactly might that be achieved?

timeless modding advice- inspect those nifs that have blinking lights. and reverse engineer the effect.

If the effect is achieve by a NiMaterialController then it's quite easy to do.