The correct approach is to apply self-illum to the eye meshes. The level of self-illum is then animated by the talk anim (which requires the LIP files to work). The appropriate keys could be copied from HK's talk anim.
Using an envmap texture-based approach won't work, as there's no way to animate that from the model.
Edit: As I recall, the model lacks separate eye meshes (they are just painted onto the head). I believe I gave them some years ago, probably back in the LF days. Also possibly did the same trick as with that recent TSL HK issue, added keys for the self-illum to be off during the disabled anim so the eyes only light up when the droid activates, specifically for that scene on Dxun.
Edit 2: Oh, it was from your original thread. The model was supplied by ndix UR, since ye olde MDLOps couldn't handle droids properly back then. Not sure that the animation was actually done or not though. Guess age old is playing tricks on me.
Edit 3: OK, try this. I didn't look at ndix UR's previous one, since there was talk of retextures with normal maps in that thread, so I just made my own. Added new self-illum eyes, added a talk anim, edited the disabled anim to turn the self-illum off. I haven't tested it at all, but it will need LIP files to work correctly. You can probably just steal some from T3 and rename them.
Edit 4: Removed.