Why do objects disappear on zoom out?
Near and far clipping planes are imaginary planes located at two particular distances from the camera along the camera’s sight line. Only objects between a camera’s two clipping planes are rendered in that camera’s view. Any parts of objects in the scene closer to the camera than the near clipping plane, or farther from the camera than the far clipping plane, are not rendered. — Autodesk
Clipping can occur when you get too close or too far from objects in your scene. You might encounter this when you work with extremely large models (especially in architecture) or if you have altered Maya’s scale settings.
This setting is controlled in Maya on a per camera basis through the concepts of near and far clipping planes: “Near Clip Plane” “Far Clip Plane”.
Changing the setting numerically
Since this setting is on a per camera basis, it will need to be done for each viewport as needed or globally in settings (more on that later).
At some point while zooming out the content will start clipping.
Step 1 — Select viewport camera
Select the viewport’s camera View > Select Camera.
Step 2 — Open attribute editor
Open Attribute Editor with CTRL + A or Window > General Editor > Attribute Editor. The settings can be found under Camera Attributes. Increase the Far Clip Plane as needed.
Seeing clipping planes visually
It’s also possible to visually see the clipping panes for a camera. The gotcha here is that we need to create a second camera to be able to see our camera panes from another perspective.
Step 1 — Open the outliner
Open the outliner to better understand the cameras we are dealing with by going to Windows > Outliner.
Step 2 — Create new camera
Create > Cameras > Camera.
Step 3 — Look through new camera
With the new camera still selected (confirm looking at your outliner), select Panels > Look Through Selected.
Step 4 — Show cameras
Enable the display of cameras in the viewports. Display > Show > Cameras.
Step 5 — Show clipping planes
Select the original camera (persp) from the outliner then go to Display > Rendering > Camera/Light Manipulator > Clipping Planes.
Step 6 — Refocus viewport on camera
Now that everything is in place, select the original camera (persp) again from the outliner and press f to focus on it. You should now see the clipping planes in the viewport.
Changing the setting globally
Maya has a setting to change
Conclusion
The clipping feature is likely there for specific reasons very possibly performance. We wouldn’t recommend cranking it up by default unless needed.
