I'm trying to develop a game in visual basic 6 using Directx

I downloaded a game called "Springfield meltdown" and notice the bottom part of home (Simpson) could move and it was an .x file

I have learnt how to move the object in my program (key frames to animate) what I can't work out his how to convert a .3ds file to .x keeping the frames intact I am able to use conv3ds to convert .3ds to .x and they work fine yet when I try to load them ready for animating they simply don't appear could someone give me some info on how I would go about doing this? The data I use in the command line is

Conv3ds -m -s 1 object.3ds