Porous ceramics in monolithic or microspherical shape are used as catalyst supports for various reactor configurations. Depending on the targeted catalytic conversion, the carrier must accommodate metal-based, biological or organic active sites, each imposing specific requirements and constraints on the carrier. The ability to tailor properties such as pore morphology, pore size and volume, permeability, specific surface area and surface affinities, is highly desirable, as these characteristics affect the interactions between the carrier, catalytic sites, reactants and products. An innovative shaping technique combining polymer-derived ceramics with freeze-casting enables the tailoring of numerous parameters. In contrast to ice-templating, where frozen water serves as the pore templating agent, solidification-templating utilizes organic solvents (e.g. cyclohexane, cylcooctane, L-menthol, camphene), further expanding the range of achievable pore morphologies and making solution-based processing of preceramic polymers (PCPs) available. In this case, the fixation of the low temperature state is crucial, achieved through photopolymerization-assisted crosslinking. In addition to employing PCPs in unidirectional freeze-casting yielding porous monoliths, solidification-templating of PCP-containing emulsions facilitates new pathways towards the fabrication of porous ceramic microspheres. Oil-in-water emulsions are achieved by the non-polar character of the PCP in the organic solvent and the use of a suitable surfactant. The droplet shape defines the resulting microsphere morphology, while the solidification-induced phase separation forms open-pore networks through the microspheres. Internal pore morphologies of microspheres correspond to those of the respective monolithic analogues. In addition to unidirectional solidification of emulsions, a novel method is introduced for selective solidification and photopolymerization of cyclooctane/polymer droplets within the liquid water phase in a stirred-tank setup, significantly improving process efficiency and yielding SiOC microspheres with monomodal size distributions (d₅₀ = 199 µm) and modal pore opening diameters of 5.2 µm. Results on open-porous SiOC monoliths and microspheres demonstrate the potential for further application of the materials concept in catalysis applications.