Hiding intersecting parts and beyond intersections while animating piston movement

Question

Im trying to implement a piston movement animation for this Bionicle leg piece and the pistons are intersecting with the mesh when moving or statically. The real life object cannot move in this direction, so movement of legs is unnatural without the knees Of course, I can cut a part of the piston with an angle that can hide it inside the mesh, animation ruins it tho (piston bones are hidden, using damped track constraint).

Is there any possible solution to hide that intersecting part of the mesh? Also here is the inside view, if it's of any use:

Answer 1

I suggest you make a convex hull duplicate version of the triangle piece (with the same modifiers and such to keep it in the same position as the original), and hide it from viewport/render, but use it as the target for a Boolean modifier on the piston shell.