Use a surface shader or a mia_material_x, under advanced tab for additional color connect a mia_light_surface node and adjust parameters to get the effect you want (you need final gather enabled and some surrounding geometry for the light to bounce off to get this to work).soo like make a cylinder make it transparent and make it glow? im not sure i know how to make it glow..
i think this is the best solution. We just finished a commercial basically making laser beam things that fly down roads, over water, etc, and all the glow was done in comp.Since Maya glow can be a bit hit or miss, you can render out whatever objects that need to glow to a separate render layer and then apply glow in comp.