Can I make any parts of an object inside a partially transparent object fully invisible?

If I have an articulated object made up of separate moveable mesh objects, which intersect in places, and I want to have the whole object fade in and out- how do I do that without seeing the internal overlaps or back sides? I want it to look more as if it were rendered with each object fully opaque, then the 2d image was put on a Photoshop layer and made semi-transparent, rather than inter-penetrating semi-transparent bubbles in 3d space. I don't know much about what can be done with shaders, and even less with render queue / render passes, so any tips in the right direction would be appreciated.