Using thermal spraying various surface coatings consisting of different material compositions can be manufactured. Besides different solid phases the resulting coating microstructure often contains a non-negligible amount of pores altering their mechanical properties. A common practice to analyze the porosity and composition of a coating is to create cross section images using standard light microscopy equipment or a scanning electron microscope. In this paper a method is presented to construct a three-dimensional multiphase model of the coating from a number of such cross section images by means of an image morphing technique. The resulting model can then be used for visualization purposes or further analysis e.g. within a finite element simulation. The described method has been applied to the construction of a finite element model of a porous coating sample which is used in a compaction simulation to determine its behavior in a rolling process. The required cross section images were obtained using a successive grinding and microscopy procedure. The material behavior of the porous material is modeled by using a modified Johnson-Cook material model formulation for an elasto-viscoplastic material. Comparison of 2D and 3D-simulation results are shown.